When Alexander Greyfell came to Crawfordsville, IN, 13 August 1897 to apply for the position of Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Wabash College, he had no interest in the job.
However, gaining this post would be the last piece of his elaborate and dangerous plan weeks in the making.
—from Men of Letters, by Mark Flexter ’79
The first thing you’ll notice just a few pages into Men of Letters by Mark Flexter ’74 is the author’s remarkable attention to historical and geographical detail.
That attention is no surprise: Flexter is a day trader of stocks. His livelihood depends on “knowing more about the companies
I’m investing in than anyone else.”
So after he decided to set his action-adventure story at Wabash College in the 1890s, he pored over documents in the College
archives and Crawfordsville Public Library. He walked the streets of the city to make sure every building he described, every path
his characters took was accurate to the smallest detail. Even the arrival and departure times of the trains are historically correct.
His research introduced him to the Wabash of the 1890s.
“The most amazing person I met was Professor John Lyle Campbell,” Flexter says. “He was a rock star: a cross between Stephen Hawking and Tom Cruise. He set up the first electric lighting in town in 1880—lit up Yandes Library and mesmerized Crawfordsville.
And just three months after Edison had invented the lightbulb!”
Flexter had to visit Oak Hill cemetery on the far north side of Crawfordsville to find the names of Wabash faculty members’
wives who appear in the book.
“I couldn’t find their first names in any records I’d looked at. They were always Mrs. Atlas Hadley or Mrs. John Lyle Campbell. They deserved to be remembered by their first names.”
Flexter used his thorough research to ground the characters he brought to life in the novel, which he dedicated to Professor Emeritus of Classics John Fischer H’70.
“I was trying to accomplish three things with the book: I wanted to tell an exciting story; I wanted that story to draw people into the
history of Wabash and Montgomery County; I wanted to create bad-ass characters, but I wanted the reader to see them as human beings.
“I wanted to create the most adventurous adventure, and I wanted the characters to be so real. I got to the point I was talking to these people.”