While cruising the entire stretch of U.S. Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, an educator, who also is the president of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., stopped in Rolla on Wednesday to research mainstream Americans, to find how they define their country with respect to higher education.
“I made this trip last year,” said Andrew K. Benton, president of Pepperdine University, located in Malibu, Calif.  “Rolla was my first stop (after departing Chicago), and I found it very representative of most of America’s heartland cities — no pretense.”
Benton hopes to collect at least 25 in-depth interviews from residents of the cities along U.S. Route 66, the highway he calls the “Mother Road.”
The theme of his research is “Conversations Along America’s Main Street,” and although he states he is attempting to “learn things they know and listen to what their hearts are telling them about our nation and its institutions — our families and shared values,” he also is slanting his research toward gaining “a clearer view of the relevance of the higher education industry in which I serve.”
Benton plans to conduct recorded interviews with educators, parents, business people and church and civic leaders along the way.
After having left Chicago on Sunday evening and while motoring in a vintage Mustang, Benton stopped in four cities to interview local people: Joliet, Funks Grove and Springfield, Ill., and Rolla.
So far, Benton said the local residents have voiced some repeating themes:
• “We’re proud of our freedom to choose, whether we make mistakes or become successful.”
• “We want our children to learn to take responsibility for their actions and to attain common sense.”
With respect to the economic climate of the nation, Benton said people, generally, believe the economy is “resilient.”
One person with whom Benton spoke was a successful author who admitted to only having attained an eighth-grade education.
The author told Benton he was convinced that success was not contingent upon a person’s background.
Driving 2,448 miles across the country through eight states is not an easy task.
“The trip is hard.  I have no preconceived notions about what I expect to discover.  I drove this route last year and came up with this idea.”
The end result of his trip may be a series of articles, short video clips or a book that recounts his travels and the lessons he’s learned from the road.
Benton hopes to arrive in Los Angeles around July 23, but he’s not traveling with an inked-in agenda.
“Route 66 must be traveled slowly,” Benton explained.  “It’s a richly textured and relatively slow path.  Hopefully, I’ll return home a better president than when I started.”