Qualla: Concordia College (Moorhead, Minnesota)

Concordia College (Moorhead, Minnesota): Introduction

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cedar Tree, CC BY-SA 4.0. On November 22, 1963, Secret Service agent Clint Hill threw himself onto the back of a moving presidential limousine in Dallas, shielding Jacqueline Kennedy with his body moments after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Hill is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota -- a small Lutheran liberal arts school that opened on October 31, 1891, with three faculty members and twelve students. That a tiny academy founded by a dozen Norwegian pastors and laymen in the Red River Valley could produce a figure at the center of one of America's most defining moments is not an anomaly. It is a pattern. Concordia has sent an extraordinary number of its graduates into positions of national and international consequence, from senators and governors to opera singers, NFL players, and a World War II pilot who became an ace in a single day.

Image: Cedar Tree | CC BY-SA 4.0

Concordia College (Moorhead, Minnesota): Norwegian Roots in the River Valley

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tom S., CC BY-SA 3.0. Concordia began on the property of the former Episcopalian Bishop Whipple School, which had closed in 1887. Ingebrikt Grose, an English professor recruited from St. Olaf College, presided over the new academy, which offered coeducational instruction in English literature, natural...

Image: Tom S. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Concordia College (Moorhead, Minnesota): A Choir That Travels the World

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JWGreen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Music has been part of Concordia since day one -- piano and organ lessons were offered from the school's 1891 opening. But it was the founding of The Concordia Choir in 1919 that launched a musical tradition of national significance. The 78-member mixed choir began touring in 192...

Image: JWGreen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Concordia College (Moorhead, Minnesota): The Fastest Ace in a Day

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bobak Ha'Eri, CC BY 3.0. Concordia's alumni roster reads like a catalog of improbable careers launched from a prairie campus. Scrappy Blumer, a U.S. Army Air Forces pilot in World War II, earned five aerial victories in a single action on August 25, 1944, making him the 'Fastest Ace in a Day.' Coya Knuts...

Image: Bobak Ha'Eri | CC BY 3.0

Concordia College (Moorhead, Minnesota): Cobbers on the Gridiron

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjorn G. Altenburg, CC0. Concordia's athletic nickname -- the Cobbers, short for Corncobbers -- suits the unpretentious character of a school rooted in farming country. Athletics started with a baseball club in 1903 and a basketball team in 1907. Football arrived in 1916, and Concordia joined the Minneso...

Image: Bjorn G. Altenburg | CC0