The Past Has a Future

Emeritus Recognition Caps Dr. David Yelton’s 35-Year Journey of Scholarship and Service at GWU

By Jackie Bridges

On the last day of class in History 331, Gardner-Webb University professor of history Dr. David Yelton handed each student a thank you note. Mostly history majors, they had given him a retirement party the week before. This gesture spoke volumes about Yelton’s devotion to his students during his 35 years at the University. “I will say that nothing is more meaningful to me as a professor than having a student express their appreciation for my efforts to help them grow in knowledge, ability and confidence,” Yelton shared. “That’s why I’ve spent some 92 semesters in higher education.”

In teaching the value of communication, critical-thinking skills, and researching a question or problem, Yelton was a champion for academic integrity. He played an instrumental role in the creation of the Academic Honesty Policy, helping create a system to track, identify and, as warranted, punish repeat offenders.

At his retirement, Yelton was named professor emeritus of history for his years of service and contributions to Gardner-Webb. When the announcement was made, the faculty responded with a standing ovation. “That was as much of a reward that I could have asked for—they were essentially saying you did a good job,” Yelton said. “Coming from your colleagues, it makes all the struggles along the way worth it.”

Yelton, a Rutherford County, N.C., native, applied for a position at Gardner-Webb in 1990. A one-year commitment, he was asked to stay when professor Dr. Gil Blackburn moved into administration. Yelton established himself as a faculty leader, serving as coordinator for Secondary Education Social Studies Teacher Licensure from 1992 to 2012, chair of the department from 2002-07, chair of the faculty from 2007-09, and assistant provost for Arts & Sciences from 2016-20. He was also a member of the groups that built the Professional Readiness Experience (PRE) and that established the information literacy requirement.

Yelton’s professor at Appalachian State, Dr. Rennie Brantz, inspired him to become a college professor and further developed his childhood fascination with German history. After earning his bachelor’s in history from Appalachian State, Yelton received his master’s (1985) and Ph.D. (1990) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He narrowed his focus to examine the citizen militia of Nazi Germany. “I selected it as a dissertation topic because at that time it had never been thoroughly studied,” Yelton offered. “Once I began researching the topic, I found that there had been little work in English on the German perspective of the end of the war.”

Yelton is the author of two books, Hitler’s Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany 1944-45 (University Press of Kansas, 2002) and Hitler’s Home Guard: Volkssturmman, Western Front, 1944–1945 (Osprey Publishing, 2006), and in 2020 he received the Vandervort Prize from the Journal of Military History for his article “Older German Officers and National Socialist Activism: Evidence from the German Volkssturm,” published in the April 2019 issue. “To have it recognized as expanding our knowledge of the Third Reich made all the long and tedious hours of research, writing and editing more than worthwhile,” Yelton related. “It’s an affirmation of knowing that your scholarly work is appreciated by your peers and an acknowledgement that your work makes a difference. Vandervort was the editor who approved the draft of this article with the recommendation of several readers, so that adds to the honor.”

Yelton emphasized to his students the value of examining a topic, and knowing how to conduct in-depth research are essential skills that go beyond history majors.

“One of the key things studying history does is to give you a broader perspective of time,” Yelton observed. “American culture is notoriously short-term oriented. Businesspeople always talk about the next quarter. One of the basic skills you need in any profession is to be able to step back from things and have a more strategic longer-term perspective. History forces you into doing that. Everything is connected; history is just a long chain of causes and results.”