Running, Leona Glidden (1916–2014)

Leona Glidden Running¹ was the first fulltime female professor in the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary where she honed the biblical-language skills of thousands of pastors from around the world. After years of teaching modern languages at the secondary level, working at the Voice of Prophecy, and serving as a secretary and editor in the General Conference Ministerial Association, she earned a doctorate in Semitic languages and taught for forty-six years in the seminary.

Early Life

Leona Rachel Glidden was born on August 24, 1916, in Mount Morris, Michigan.² Her father, Charles Comstock Glidden, was a truck mechanic and photographer. Her mother, Leona Mary Bertha Boat, set type in a printing office and later studied teacher training at Emmanuel Missionary College (EMC) in Berrien Springs, Michigan. They became Seventh-day Adventists before they met. Leona Rachel was baptized when she was nine years old.

Glidden demonstrated an early aptitude for academics and language. She learned phonics during her preschool years, and by the age of eight she was ready for fourth grade. Her lifelong love of books began when their parents gave her and her younger sister, Bethel Elaine (1922-2006), books for Christmases and birthdays. Bethel married Judson Paul Habenicht, whose family started Adventist medical and educational work in Argentina.

Education

After finishing eighth grade at the age of twelve, Leona Glidden enrolled at Adelphian Academy in Holly, Michigan. Socially she found it difficult to be so much younger than her peers, while at the same time her parents struggled to pay the school fees as they suffered financial setbacks during the early years of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Glidden began learning Spanish her junior year. It was the beginning of a lifelong love of language. During her senior year, the school’s new Spanish teacher was frequently ill, and Glidden substitute taught both the first- and second-year classes. Glidden graduated from Adelphian Academy in May 1933 and enrolled at EMC the following autumn.

At EMC over the course of for four years, Glidden worked in the laundry, library, an education professor’s office, and as a reader grading French and German papers, in order to earn her tuition. She majored in the literary course in which she learned French and German, and took typing, library science, history, and literature courses. She student-taught English and French courses at Emmanuel Missionary College Academy (now Andrews Academy). Glidden graduated as class valedictorian in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.³ She later earned a Master of Arts degree in biblical languages from the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in August 1955⁴ and a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1964.⁵

Academy Teaching

Upon her undergraduate college graduation, Glidden accepted a call to teach German and French at Laurelwood Academy in Gaston, Oregon, beginning in the autumn of 1937. In her second year, besides teaching four language classes, Glidden became the academy librarian. During the summer of 1939, she took advanced French and German classes at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Glidden continued working at Laurelwood until 1941.

Marriage

While employed at Laurelwood Academy, Glidden became friends with the academy matron, Ruth Running, For Christmas in 1940, the two women drove to Weimar, California, where Glidden met Ruth’s brother Leif Hedeman Running (1909-1946), known as Bud. He was recovering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Weimar. Glidden and Bud Running began a correspondence that soon turned to courtship.

During this time, Glidden’s own health was deteriorating. In the spring of 1941, she resigned from Laurelwood and returned to her parents’ home, now in Detroit, Michigan. A doctor diagnosed undulant fever, believed to be caused by drinking unpasteurized milk while a student at Adelphian Academy. Glidden worked part-time at the local library and studied Gregg shorthand while undergoing medical treatment.

In 1942 Glidden moved to Glendale, California, where she could be closer to Bud while working as secretary for C. L. Bauer, secretary-treasurer of the Pacific Union Conference, a position she held until 1944. She immediately began plans to marry, although they were stymied by California’s mandatory health check for marriage licenses. With the encouragement of friends, they eloped, traveling to Lovelock, Nevada, where they were married by a justice of the peace on May 17, 1942.

Voice of Prophecy Translator

In the late spring of 1944, Glidden, now Mrs. Running, accepted a position with the Voice of Prophecy that would use her language skills. She translated, prepared, and responded to German Bible correspondence lessons, soon also typing Spanish and Portuguese scripts. She worked with Elders Braulio Perez, Roberto Rabello, Fordyce Detamore, Arthur Delafield, and David Lin, the latter of whom translated the correspondence lessons into Chinese.

These were difficult years for the Runnings. Bud’s health made it difficult for him to work. He underwent several lung surgeries, paid for by the Tuberculosis Association. However, they still struggled financially as Leona was paid less than her male co-workers. A Voice of Prophecy administrator finally persuaded the board to give her a monthly medical allowance to increase her salary. Bud was undergoing yet another surgery on August 20, 1946, when he died on the operating table. His death sent Leona into eight years of deep grief during which she “could not see God’s plan for [her] life ahead of [her] anymore.”⁶

Moving East

While she was dealing with her husband’s illness and death, Running was also overwhelmed by the German Bible Correspondence School. In the aftermath of World War II, the Voice of Prophecy was inundated with requests for both Bible lessons and physical food and clothing. At her urging, a replacement was found for her in Switzerland, and his appointment was approved by the 1947 Fall Council. Hoping that living closer to her family would help her emotional healing, she took a job with Pacific Press’s Brookfield, Illinois, office which published material in languages other than English. Pacific Press paid less than the Voice of Prophecy, so she worked at a corner drugstore in the evenings to supplement her meager income.

In 1948, Running became the secretary to Elder Caris Lauda, president of the Carolina Conference. She also taught a teenagers’ Sabbath school class and led the young people’s meetings on Sabbath afternoons at her local church.

In the summer of 1950, Running joined the General Conference Ministerial Association to work with R. A. Anderson and George Vandeman. She copy-edited Ministry magazine under managing editor Ben Glanzer, who had sung in the Voice of Prophecy King’s Heralds Quartet when she worked there. She shared an apartment with Mildred Johnson, editor of the Youth Department’s MV Kit. When an author failed Johnson, Running would quickly create a program suggestion for the MV Kit. She also translated letters for Reuben Figuhr, General Conference president.

While working at the Voice of Prophecy in the mid-1940s, Running had bought a Greek-and-English New Testament to learn Greek. Her interest then had been sparked by some Church of God visitors who argued that Christ was crucified on Wednesday. In 1952 Charles Weniger, dean of the Theological Seminary then next door to the General Conference, encouraged her to study for an MA degree. She began typing theses for other students to earn money and registered for two Hebrew classes. However, when the General Conference personnel manager objected to a woman taking seminary courses, she was forced to withdraw or face losing her job.

During these years of grief and aimlessness, Running had kept herself intellectually stimulated by working full-time in addition to freelance work and volunteer positions. Overworking eventually led to a health crisis, which among other things included an ulcer and clinical depression compounded by long-term grief (“nervous exhaustion”).⁷ During medical treatment and the ensuing recuperation, she reconsidered her career. She briefly returned to the General Conference, but then resigned in December 1954 to pursue seminary studies full time.

Seminary Teaching and Further Education

Following graduation in August 1955, chairmen of the seminary departments of Old Testament, systematic theology, and New Testament—respectively, Siegfried H. Horn, W. G. Murdoch, and R. E. Loasby—asked Running to teach beginning Greek and Hebrew that fall. Ernest D. Dick, seminary president, did not think men would study under a woman, so she began on a trial basis. In 1956 the board regularized her status, and soon she received tenure.⁸ Thus, she is credited as the first woman to teach fulltime at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.⁹ Several other women, including Ivamae Small Hilts, had previously taught parttime as “special instructors.”¹⁰

During Running’s second year of teaching, Loasby urged her to pursue a doctorate as she was the only faculty member without one. Besides teaching, she also worked half-time at the Review and Herald Publishing Association assisting with editing and indexing the New Testament volumes of the SDA Bible Commentary. However, in January 1957 Horn accompanied her to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she met with Dr. William Foxwell Albright, Horn’s mentor, one of the most influential American biblical scholars of the twentieth century, and a member of the faculty in the Johns Hopkins University’ department of Near Eastern Studies. Albright and Running conversed in Spanish, French, and German. Albright had her read and translate scriptural passages in Hebrew and Greek. He accepted her simple statement that she had been studying Latin for the past six weeks and could read the Vulgate. Thus, in one hour’s conversation she passed her incoming languages. She began classes that spring.

In October 1958 Running and the seminary faculty were stunned to learn that the General Conference, during its autumn council, proposed to move the seminary and graduate school to Michigan to merge with EMC. F. O. Rittenhouse, president of the soon to be Andrews University, assured Running that he would continue to cover her tuition expenses at Johns Hopkins and give her time to finish her doctorate. In 1960 she returned to her alma mater, now renamed Andrews University, and settled into a small house on the campus in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Her completed doctoral dissertation included 147 pages of handwritten Syriac, written left to right on two carbon sheets. She graduated in June of 1964.¹¹ During her seminary career, she taught Egyptian, Akkadian, and Syriac in addition to Greek and Hebrew.

Working with Dr. Albright

In the autumn of 1964 Dr. Albright spoke at a weekend archaeology seminar on the campus of Notre Dame University which Running attended. During this event, he asked Running to be his research assistant. Andrews University allowed her a year’s leave of absence while she did so. She had already planned to take the summer of 1965 to study modern Hebrew in Israel. After the summer in Israel, she returned to Baltimore. As Albright’s assistant, Running took dictation of letters and manuscripts, then typed them each evening. Health issues limited Albright to thirty- hour work weeks. To increase her hours, Running typed manuscripts for other professors and did some scholarly work of her own.

In the summer of 1966 Running helped Albright finish his last book and then returned to Andrews. However, she remained Albright’s editorial assistant for the rest of his life. She still went to Baltimore for three or four weeks between summer and fall terms at Andrews, once for a week during Christmas vacation, and in 1970 for the spring and summer while on sabbatical from Andrews.

Albright suffered several strokes and died on September 19, 1971. At his funeral, Running met David Noel Freedman, the noted biblical scholar and archaeologist who was the first American to work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Running and Freedman subsequently worked together on Albright’s biography. For Running this included a summer at the Albright apartment, working through old letters and manuscripts, trips with his widow, Ruth, to visit and interview relatives, much typing back in Berrien Springs, and visits with Freedman to collaborate. Freedman also sent her his twenty-five years of correspondence with Albright. From a working draft of two thousand pages, she sent the much-condensed finished manuscript to Freedman before going overseas in 1974. He took it to a publisher, and it was released in 1975 as William Foxwell Albright: A Twentieth-Century Genius, with the added description A Biography of the Acknowledged Dean of Biblical Archaeologists.¹² In 1991 Running secured the copyright, and the Andrews University Press brought out a centennial edition to celebrate Albright’s hundredth birthday, with additional pictures and epilogue.

Later Career

In the spring of 1967, Horn, Murdoch, and Richard Hammill, Andrews University president, negotiated with the General Conference to give women in educational work pay equal with men, based on experience and rank. Thus, the wage discrimination that Running had experienced throughout her career in church finally came to an end.

When Siegfried H. Horn became dean of the seminary in 1973, he offered Running his former position as chair of the Old Testament department. She turned it down, preferring to teach biblical languages fulltime. However, Horn did improve working conditions for her and other women by establishing a change in the dress code allowing them to wear pantsuits for work and classes in the seminary, much more practical clothing for Michigan’s cold winters than the skirts which women had always been expected to wear.

Running never felt called to become an ordained minister herself. In fact, when the General Conference asked her to write a paper on the role of women in the church in 1970, she discussed a variety of issues on which women experienced discrimination, but failed to include ordination. She was surprised when a colleague pointed out that the ordination debate was the main reason she had been asked to write the paper. She quickly amended the paper and then became an advocate for women’s ordination, not for herself, but for the women she taught.

In September 1973 two dozen scholars, including Running,¹³ met at Camp Mohaven in Ohio to discuss women’s ordination. They expected quick action on their strongly positive recommendation to the Annual Council. But their high hopes soon crashed. Subsequent General Conference sessions failed to implement anything more than giving permission for women to minister, but without the ordination and backing of the world church. Having suffered hardship from unequal pay herself, Running also supported Merikay McLeod and Lorna Tobler in their class-action suit to obtain equal pay for women employed by Pacific Press in the early 1970s.

After the Mohaven Conference, Running began collecting clippings, articles, and other materials about women's issues. In 1989 she deposited the well-organized “Leona G. Running Collection on Women in Church and Society” into the Heritage Room (now the Center for Adventist Research) in the James White Library at Andrews University.

In 1974 she went to Newbold College in England, to teach seminary extension courses in archaeology and Bible Lands geography in the affiliated graduate school for the summer term.

Running was elected vice president/president-elect of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research in the 1979-1980 term when her former student Earle Hilgert became its president. Consequently, she became its first woman president the next year.

Travel

Running loved to travel, and her international experiences enhanced her teaching. Her first opportunity to travel occurred while she was working for the Ministerial Association in 1951.

In company with Del Delker, vocalist for the Voice of Prophecy, she attended a Youth Congress in Paris. The two young women toured much of England, the Low Countries, Switzerland, and Italy before flying home from Paris. Running wrote about their experiences in an engaging work of travel literature titled 36 Days and a Dream.¹⁴ Lauded as a “lively account of two American girls and their happy adventures in the storied lands of Europe,” it was added to the 1953 Senior Missionary Volunteer Book Club reading list.¹⁵ Chapter 8 was adapted into an article for the Youth’s Instructor.¹⁶

In 1957 Running joined Siegfried H. Horn’s first study tour to Europe and the Bible Lands. She was given the time off to go with half-salary; she would receive the other half if she returned healthy enough to continue teaching. By the end of August, she was ready to teach, although she was still recovering from the Giardia lamblia parasites acquired from a well on Mount Sinai.

Running again toured with Horn in 1959, visiting England, France, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Cypress, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland. Her experiences on this journey were published in the book From Thames to Tigris.¹⁷ Horn requested a mimeographed edition to share with people who asked him what sites to include in their itineraries. This trip made the Bible come alive for Running, who believed that everyone should visit at least Israel and Egypt.

Two subsequent tours in 1965 and 1970 included visits to England, Wales, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece—including a cruise among the Greek Islands, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and Cyprus. In many of these places she stopped to see friends and her former students who were now church leaders and teachers themselves.

Running also took shorter trips accompanied by friends. With music professor Blythe Owen and English professor Opal Hoover, she traveled to Ontario, Canada, for the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-on-Avon several times. She also enjoyed Chautauqua concerts and lectures on women’s equality in New York. In 1974, while her Newbold students attended a workers’ meeting, Running spent a few days with a tour group led by Andrews University professor Dr. Merlene Ogden. Afterwards she enjoyed friends and sightseeing in Paris, Germany, and Austria.

Later Years

Running retired in 1981, but she did not reduce her workload. During her twenty-one years of “retirement,” she still taught Egyptian, Akkadian, and Syriac, proofread for Andrews University Seminary Studies, and edited doctoral dissertations, especially for students with foreign-language difficulties. She could usually do the job immediately and replied to expressions of wonder, “It’s the Running Method.”

In 1971 Running and her sister had moved their parents to a house in Berrien Springs. Her mother fractured a hip and her father had a heart attack in 1983. In June 1985, her brother-in-law Judson died. A month later her parents celebrated their seventy-first anniversary, and on September 28 her mother died, two months short of ninety-three. Running continued to care for her father, who died on May 4, 1990, at age ninety-eight.

Running continued to enjoy travel. A friend offered to take Running to Glendale After she attended the 1991 Association of Adventist Women convention, a friend offered to take her to Glendale for her first visit since she had left in 1948. She accepted with tears in her eyes. It was her last visit to Bud’s grave.

As Running entered her later years, she remained physically active; however, she experienced several health problems. In 2004 Running fractured her left ulna in a fall, and in 2005 another fall fractured her left arm. Both required surgery and physical therapy. As she became frailer, she received phone calls from around the world and visits from students, colleagues, administrators, and other friends.

Her sister was also becoming frailer. In the summer of 2000, Beth fractured a vertebra. After a series of setbacks, she died on October 12, 2006.

When the newly renovated Seminary Building was dedication on October 6, 2001, Dean John McVay honored Running as the first woman faculty member and the only one left who had taught in Takoma Park.

In 2008 Running wrote her autobiography, My Journey,¹⁸ on her portable typewriter. Soon after it was published by the General Conference Ministerial Association, she moved to Jenny’s Place, a care facility in Berrien Springs, where she continued editing dissertations and Andrews University Seminary Studies until she quietly passed to her rest on January 22, 2014, at age 97.¹⁹

Legacy

Running often said of her name, “My students wished it were Walker.” She set a brisk pace in her classes because of the short time available for students to achieve a reading knowledge of Hebrew. One student asked another about the Egyptian class he’d taken, “Did you take it from Leona Running?” “No,” he exclaimed, “from Leona Flying!”²⁰

Running published articles in Andrews University Seminary Studies, the Adventist Review, Ministry, and The Journal of Biblical Literature. She also created the index of word studies in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic for all seven volumes of the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary.²¹ However, her most significant contribution was in the classroom. She loved to see comprehension dawn in students’ faces when she explained something to them in one of the Semitic languages.

Thousands of pastors and administrators around the globe more “rightly divide” the Word of God because of the biblical-language skills Running gave them, and thousands of women around the globe are encouraged and strengthened in ministry because of her scholarship, library collection, and example.

Awards and Honors

Leona Glidden Running was the recipient of numerous awards. She was an honored alumna at Andrews University in 1977, her fortieth class reunion from EMC. Likewise, Adelphian Academy honored her in 1978 on the forty-fifth anniversary of her academy graduation.

The 1987 spring issue of Andrews University Seminary Studies was published as a Festschrift in honor of Running’s twenty-five years as copy-editor of this journal started by Siegfried H. Horn in 1962. It included Running’s photo, as well as tributes and articles by several colleagues, including Noel Freedman.²²

Further awards from Andrews University included 1989 a Weniger medal for excellence in teaching in 1989. Her former student, Dr. Russell Staples, was also a recipient that year. In 1993 Running received the J. N. Andrews Medallion. In 2012 she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.²³

At the national convention of the Association of Adventist Women (AAW), meeting in Santa Clara, California, gave Running a plaque and a thousand dollars to buy books for the James White Library and Horn Museum in 1991. She told the group that she was “speechless in several languages.” October 1996, Running also received the AAW’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1992 the Lake Union Women’s Ministries Department gave Running the Trailblazer Award for Outstanding Leadership in Christian Education.

For her eightieth birthday the AU Women’s Scholarship Committee held a reception in September 1996. On this occasion money from friends and former students created the Leona Glidden Running Endowed Scholarship for female seminary students.

In 1997 Running was honored by the General Conference Education Department’s Medallion of Merit.

Sources

“1953 Missionary Volunteer Reading Club.” Youth’s Instructor, February 3, 1943. Andrews University Seminary Studies 25, no. 1 (Spring 1987).

General Conference Committee. Accessed September 26, 2023. https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Minutes/GCC.

“Official Graduation List.” Andrews University, 2015. Accessed September 12, 2023. https://vault.andrews.edu/vault/app/gradlist/collect_list_of_graduates.

Spangler, Patricia. “Leona Glidden Running obituary.” Andrews University News, January 29, 2014. Accessed September 26, 2023. https://www.andrews.edu/news/2014/01/Leona_Running_Obitua.html.

Running, Leona Glidden. 36 Days and a Dream. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1952.

Running, Leona Glidden. “An Investigation of the Syriac Version of Isaiah.” Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1964.

Running, Leona Glidden. From Thames to Tigris: Diary of the 1957 Seminary Bible Lands Tour. Printed by Washington College Press, 1958.

Running, Leona Glidden. My Journey. Silver Spring, MD: General Conference Ministerial Association, 2009.

Running, Leona Glidden. “Next: Switzerland.” Youth’s Instructor, February 3, 1943.

Running, Leona Glidden and David Noel Freedom. William Foxwell Albright: A Twentieth-Century Genius: A Biography of the Acknowledged Dean of Biblical Archaeologists. New York: The Two Continents Publishing Group, Ltd./Morgan Press, 1975; reprinted in Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1991.

Notes