C. Franklin Bishop Scholarship Fund
From his childhood on a Doylestown, Pa. farm to lectures in Witmer Woods or the warm waters of the Florida Keys, C. Franklin Bishop carried a near-constant conversation with nature. During the 39 years as Goshen College professor of biology, Dr. Bishop gave thousands of students peeks into the magic of the natural world. Even after his 1985 retirement, Dr. Bishop’s many insights into God’s creation continued to enrich students on campus and off.
Born June 29, 1918, Dr. Bishop grew up on a Mennonite farm in Bucks County, Pa. As his inquiring mind experienced agricultural life, he developed a strong desire to try to understand nature’s mysteries more fully. Recommendations from older siblings, George and Gertrude, led him to begin studies at Goshen College in 1936, where he quickly planted his boots in the footprints of Professor of Biology S.W. Witmer.
“Dr. Witmer displayed curiosity for the world around him. That in itself made him my role model,” Dr. Bishop said. “As a teacher, I tried to make students feel the same way about the world around them as the way (Witmer) made me feel.” Driven by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Dr. Bishop once asked Witmer how he knew so much. The answer – “Mr. Bishop, you must work at it.”
And work Bishop did. He graduated from Goshen College in 1940 and continued to West Virginia University, where he sandwiched a master’s degree in 1942 and a doctorate in 1948 around an April 25, 1943 wedding to Suzanne Harnish. He served on the WVU faculty as a specialist in plant pathology and entomology and was responsible for all extension agents in West Virginia, until he accepted a teaching position at Goshen College in 1956.
“I have a love of sharing with students my insights and my interests in plants and animals,” he explained. “The idea of sharing what you know is a tremendously important activity. Teaching is basically sharing information. If students get involved in an area that is next door to their very spirit, they open up doors they never dreamed they would open up.”
He stayed at Goshen until his retirement in 1985, chairing the natural science, biology and agricultural studies departments along the way – but not because of a lack of opportunities elsewhere. Dr. Bishop turned down offers from several larger universities, and one invitation to become the nation’s federal Extension Plant Pathologist in Washington D.C.
In the course of his career, Dr. Bishop walked through doors around the world including stints as a visiting professor at the University of Florida and University of South Florida. He taught at Goshen’s marine biology laboratory in the Florida Keys, where he established a key for the identification of 235 different marine algae as a teaching tool for his students. His love for teaching kept him in the classroom, long after his official retirement.
In 1967, Dr. Bishop traveled around the world for a Mennonite Central Committee/ Mennonite Board of Missions project dedicated to gaining perspectives into world hunger. His experiences, both in areas of wealth and abject hunger, including Japan, eastern Nigeria, India and the Philippines, were turned into a 1968 Herald Press pamphlet, “World Hunger: Reality and Challenge,” and a later lecture on world hunger.
From 1963 to 1983, Dr. Bishop directed an agricultural project in Haiti funded by the Hesston Foundation, Hesston, Kan. He used a 1973 grant from the Eli Lilly Fellowship Endowment to live in Jamaica to examine the college’s innovative Study-Service Term experience first-hand. MCC supported his research efforts in tropical agriculture in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil in 1976. With Suzanne, he led SST units in Haiti in 1984.
Dr. Bishop published more than 200 articles and became recognized as the tree expert of Goshen – “the Maple City.” In 1995, Dr. Bishop led six students in cataloguing by type and location every tree in the public right of way in the city of Goshen – nearly 6,500 in all, more than 70 percent of them maples.
The Bishops have four sons, David, John, Lawrence and Bruce, all of whom attended Goshen College. Dr. Bishop died October 29, 2000.