Fred Landis was born March 19, 1894 in Battle Creek, Michigan. His father operated a hydrotherapy treatment center where he would heal sick people with water treatments. When Fred was a small boy the family moved to Graysville, Tennessee.  When he was a young teen-ager, the family moved to Chico, California.  As a young teen-ager, he developed many mechanical skills and by the time he was 16, he was a contractor hiring men to build buildings.  In his late teens he became involved with building the first bridges for northern California highways.  Cars were starting to be used by many people, and  roads and bridges had to be built.  (When he was a boy, he grew up in the age of horse and buggy.  All the skills he learned in building buildings and bridges working with heavy equipment, he would later use in China when he went as a missionary.)  He attended Lodi Academy.  In 1916 he married Chloe Buchannan.  Later he attended Pacific Union College.  He graduated from PUC in 1923.  He went in the fall of l923 to Mountain View Academy where he taught industrial arts for one school year.  In January of 1924 Fred and Chloe Landis had their first child, Irma.

In 1924 they went to China as missionaries.  They sailed on the same boat with Paul and May Quimby, and N. F. and May Brewer.  Mr. Landis went to language school for a few months.  His language-school training was cut short as his skills were needed to build the new college.  He had to learn much of his Chinese as he worked with the Chinese workers on the job without the benefits of full language school training. He was sent right away to build our new college at Chiao Tou Tseng.

Elder Rebok wanted to build a college that would train the young people to work as well as to train the mind both intellectually and spiritually.  My father supervised the building of the campus which was to include 59 separate buildings.  Chinese carpenters, masons, electricians, plasterers, plumbers and other craftsmen did most of the labor.  Fred Landis learned that Chinese workmen can do good work if you know how to make them do it.  Frequently Fred Landis would tear out the sloppy work and make them do it over and over again until they got it right.  Roads were laid out.  Trees and shrubs were planted.  A complete water system with deep wells, pumping plant, high water tower, huge tank, and piping system taking water to every building on the campus, was installed mostly by student-teacher labor.  At this time Elder Rebok purchased heavy equipment for a factory where young Chinese students could work their way through school.  Fred Landis was to be the manager of this factory. They had to move all this heavy equipment 4.5 miles from the nearest rail station up to the college on the hill. No trucks or wheeled vehicles were available for moving the two biggest pieces of equipment—the engine and flywheel which weighed several tons each.  Elder Rebok and a gang of about 50 coolies worked ahead, leveling and widening the narrow, deeply-rutted pathway which served as a road.  Much of this very narrow pathway was dikes running between the rice paddy fields.  Fred Landis and his crew followed behind the two heavy pieces of equipment.  They placed log rollers under the shipping case containing the engine.  The process kept part of the crew busy dragging the rear rollers around to the front while another part of the crew pushed the big, heavy box forward on several rollers that were constantly underneath.  Since the flywheel could not be moved this way, it was moved in an upright position, a large iron bar shafted through its center to serve as a steadying device as it was rolled slowly over the roadway.  The 4.5-mile journey required twelve long, hard, dawn-to-dusk work days.  Fred Landis learned how to do this kind of thing when he was working on northern California’s first bridges.  In July of l926 Fred and Chloe Landis had their second child, Norma.

Then just after the college was built, Chiang Kai-shek came to power. Fred Landis and Paul Quimby rode their bicycles to Nanking only to arrive in the midst of the terrible uprising.  They came very close to being murdered with the U. S. embassy people in Nanking.  They were all saved by a U. S. gunboat in the Yangtze River which fired shots all around the Socony House where they were hiding, just as the angry Chinese communist mob was trying to break into the room to kill them.  They were terribly worried about their families.  When the arrived in Shanghai thy arranged for another gunboat to rescue the missionaries from the college.  The faculty lost everything they had in this experience.  The college was severely damaged.  While the college was closed in the country,  Fred Landis built the China Division office building in Shaghai in 1927-1928.

The college had to be rebuilt in 1928 after things settled down.  Fred Landis had to supervise restoring all the buildings and equipment back into running order.  In May, 1930,  Fred and Chloe Landis had their third child, Derwin.  Fred Landis was in charge of the wood-working and metal industry at the college factory.  He was also business manager and taught accounting and salesmanship.  Mrs. Landis taught English.  The factory made metal beds, metal filing cabinets, metal library cases, and metal museum cabinets and sold them all over China.  Many Chinese students worked in this factory.  The industry helped finance the college, and helped students’ tuition so they could attend the college.  At one time, the sales of metal works from the factory dwindled down to a trickle. Elder Rebok had prayer with the faculty and talked to the students about tithing.  When the students decided to tithe their small earnings, the factory orders nearly doubled.

The man who ran the engine with the big flywheel in the factory was one of the faithful who did not apostatize when the Communists brought persecution.  He became a lay preacher and in spite of persecution, brought 2,000 souls to Christ.  He is still active for God.  At one time when Mr. Landis needed a specially-skilled metal worker, he hired, with the church’s permission, a man who was not a Christian. After a while he said to Mr. Landis.  “There is no devil here.”  When he heard the sermon on tithing, he started paying his tithe.  Later he was baptized.

In 1931 the Education Department of the government was going to close all Christian schools.  Dr. Miller took this problem to Dr. Kung who was in charge of the government’s industry and agriculture departments.  He said, “Never mind that order; the school will be registered under my department.” When the education people came to close the school, Dr. Rebok gave them a tour of the campus. When they saw the agriculture and metal factory, they were very impressed.  Dr. Rebok had taken down the sign, China Theological Seminary and put up the sign China Training Institute.  They said, “We cannot close this school.  We have never seen anything like this.”  When they told Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek about the school, he requested the church to send someone to come to his government and help him run the education program like the Seventh-day Adventist college. He was most impressed with the farming and metal factory industry of the college.  He felt that Chinese needed work education as well as brain education.  The church sent Paul Quimby up to help Chiang Kai-Shek for three years.

In 1937 the Japanese bombed Shanghai and Nanking, and the college faculty and students had to leave.  The faculty lost everything they had for the second time.  They moved the college to Sha Tin in Hong Kong.  Fred Landis stayed by and rebuilt the damaged buildings in Shanghai.

In 1939 after a year of furlough in America, Fred Landis went to Hong Kong to build our new college at Clearwater Bay.  During the school year the administration building was completed. Fred Landis was the business manager of the college for two years.  He also taught accounting and business.  Mrs. Landis taught the elementary school for the missionaries’ children.  He came back to the United States on the last trip of President Coolidge (the largest passenger ship in the Pacific) before the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.  After the war in 1947 Fred and Chloe Landis went back to China.  He rebuilt the Shanghai Sanitarium which had been destroyed in the war.  After that was completed, the division sent him to Chiao Tou Tseng to help finish the rebuilding of the college.  When the communist armies came, head by Chairman Mao, the faculty and students had to flee for the third time in its history.        

Fred Landis came back to the United States and became building supervisor at Pacific Union College where he built several new buildings including Newton Hall and the new library.  The new library was a concrete and steel building.  Though Mr. Landis had never built a concrete steel building before, he designed a new way to build this building which was very innovative.  The building supervisor in San Francisco strongly protested and said it couldn’t and must not be built that way.  Mr. Landis figured it would save the college $250,000 to build it that way.  Mr. Landis finally got reluctant permission from the building inspector.  Mr. Shull, business manager, who worked with Fred Landis at Chiao Tou Tseng, gave his ok to do it Mr. Landis’ way.  When the building was finished, it was perfect. It wasn’t a pencil mark off.  The building inspector from San Francisco, when he saw the completed building, apologized to Mr. Landis and said, “This is better workmanship than the best buildings in San Francisco.”

After his retirement he went to Monument Valley and built some new buildings there.  Chloe Landis passed away in 1973.  Fred Landis passed away in 1983 just five days before his 89thbirthday.