BOZEMAN, Mont. — In 1937, Maurice Hilleman had a job lined up as the assistant manager of the J. C. Penney in Miles City. In Depression-era Montana, Penney’s was top-notch employment, especially to a senior at Custer County High who grew up raising chickens on the outskirts of town.

But Hilleman’s older brother pointed out there was that college in Bozeman and suggested Maurice should at least try to get a scholarship. He did, finished first in his class and went on to a graduate program in microbiology at the University of Chicago. Of the 14 standard recommended vaccines — including those for measles, mumps, meningitis, pneumonia and both hepatitis A and B — Hilleman developed eight of them. In a century soaked in genocide, his work saved millions of lives, including, potentially, yours and mine. J. C. Penney’s loss was humanity’s gain.

Hilleman’s college in Bozeman, Montana State University, turns 125 this month. It is one of the government-supported land-grant colleges established by the Morrill Act, which Abraham Lincoln signed into law in 1862 to educate the children of farm and factory workers, “the sons of toil.” A statue of Lincoln sculpted by the alumnus Jim Dolan is to be unveiled on campus on Friday for the anniversary.

Like Hilleman, I might not have attended college but for M.S.U. It was what I could afford. And I’ve come to appreciate the E pluribus unum implications of having been thrown together with 10,000 Mormons, Crow, Future Farmers of America and flower children’s children whose only shared experience was that we all graduated from high school within a 400-mile radius of Great Falls. No surprise, Oprah Winfrey and Johnny Carson attended land-grant colleges in Tennessee and Nebraska — you do learn how to talk to anyone.