GACA Collection 208. Sponberg, Raymond Hilding. Collection of Ray Sponberg, 1931-2004: Overview

To learn more about this collection please see the finding aid link found above, and/or visit the College and Lutheran Church Archives to use these primary sources.

Sponberg, Raymond Hilding.  Collection of Ray Sponberg, 1931-2004.  GACA Collection 208.  1 Hollinger box and 1 flat box.

ABSTRACT:
The Raymond Hilding Sponberg collection contains scrapbooks and photo albums, most likely from his time as a student at Gustavus Adolphus College.  Subjects in the photographs include other students, Gustavus faculty, scenes of campus, and some images of family.  Also included are cassette tapes of interview between Sponberg and Chet Johnson from the late 1990s and one spiral-bound manuscript titled “Raymond’s Stories.”  These are the memoirs of Sponberg, put together by his daughter Miriam Sponberg Kagol after his death in 2004.  The memoirs hold accounts of Sponberg attending Gustavus, working as football coach under George Myrum, and events surrounding the fatal bus crash that took the lives of Myrum and two others.

Raymond Sponberg graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1937.  He worked as Gustavus Director of Admissions during his senior year and after graduation served as Director of Publicity and as the assistant football coach under George Myrum.  In 1938 he served as acting athletic director for one year.  Sponberg left Gustavus in 1940.  He was also a member of the Executive Board of the Minnesota Conference of the Augustana Synod.

Sponberg and his wife Florence were awarded the Greater Gustavus Award in 1981 for service to and support of the college.  The Sponbergs gave the first gift toward the establishment of the MAYDAY Peace Conference, earmarked funds for the new Lund Center, contributed to the Gustavus Library Associates, the College endowment, the Linnaeus Arboretum, the Peace Studies program, the chapel endowment, the Nobel Hall renovation, the Gustavus Adolphus College Association of Congregation scholarship, several scholarship funds, and they endowed the Sponberg Chair in Ethics.