It was September 1962.
The New Generation of Americans, described by President Kennedy in his inaugural address, was beginning to run with the torch passed on by its elders.
LIFE Magazine, on September 14, devoted its issue to the new crop of America's top 100 potential leaders from nearly every walk of life. Writers and musicians such as John Updike, Leontyne Price, and Edward Albee. Politicians such as Frank Church, John Lindsay, and Mark Hatfield. Athletes such as Wilma Rudolph and Eddie LeBaron. NASA scientists, journalists, theologians, and the 31-year-old president of Central College, in Pella, Iowa, named Arend Lubbers.
That's right. The same Arend Lubbers we're crediting these days for building Grand Valley into Michigan's higher education success story.
In 1962, LIFE noted that Lubbers was stressing the liberal arts, establishing a series of mind-stretching seminars by noted scholars such as Historian Arnold Toynbee.
To know what else the editors of LIFE saw in President Lubbers and his 99 up-and-coming peers, here's the introductory text of this special issue.
¿
From LIFE Magazine, September 14, 1962
The Take-over Generation
Coming hard over the horizon, just beginning to make his presence and his power felt, is a new breed of American. He is filled with purpose and he thinks on a scale that often scares his elders. He demands responsibility, not because he craves authority but because he can get the job done. He is, at this moment in history, starting to take over our destiny.
The new Take-over Generation has already sent out its frontrunners ¿ the Kennedys and Glenns. But behind them, emboldened by their example and encouraged by their success, are younger men and women pressing into authority: in government, in business, in science, in education, and in the arts. The guy you give the job to is 23. The guy who tells him what to do is 25, says the 39-year-old boss of one of the biggest nuclear laboratories in the U.S. where all of the concepts as well as the people are brand new. Even in older American establishments the take-over has started. In the big corporation, where the old desire for job security is giving way to a new insistence on job opportunity, the daring young idea man is finally starting to lay the Organization Man to rest. On campus, students move faster and more purposefully. Of the 1,200 freshmen entering Harvard this month, over 10% are so well prepared they will be given the option of starting right off as sophomores.
The Take-over Generation has historical forebears in America. At crisis points in our past new breeds have burst through ¿ ready to hack farms or towns out of wilderness, ready to win wars, evolve new laws, invent and construct new machinery to make the economy run. And when the young man at right, the son of a top businessman, turns as a top scientist, history is repeating itself to the last heartening detail.
Whether or not the extraordinary young people now poised for take-over represent a new phenomenon is not important. It is important to announce their arrival, analyze their make-up, and discover what is propelling them on to great achievement. It is with this in mind that the editors of LIFE present this special issue devoted entirely to the Take-over Generation.
