College Years
In the fall of 1945, McCully enrolled in Wheaton College where he majored in business and economics. It was also at Wheaton where he met and became good friends with Jim Elliot.
In college, McCully was an exceptional student. At 6'2" and 190 lbs., he proved to be very athletic and was a star on both the football and track teams. He also distinguished himself as a gifted orator, and became very popular among his classmates. His self-authored speech about Alexander Hamilton won him the 1949 National Hearst Oratorical Contest in San Francisco, a contest in which over 10,000 students had entered. That same year, McCully was unanimously elected senior class president.
After graduating from Wheaton in 1949, McCully entered Marquette University Law School intent on becoming a lawyer. Just before his second year there, he took a job as a hotel night clerk. Originally intending to spend the long hours studying classwork, he instead began reading more of the Bible. The story of Nehemiah as well as his correspondence with Jim Elliot, who was making preparations to leave for Ecuador at the time, inspired McCully to consider missionary work. Finally, on September 22, 1950, the day before he was to register for his second year of school, he announced he would not be returning.
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