Written by Stephanie Gordon
Decisions and Interests
“Where should I go to college?” was a question Nathaniel “Nate” Stewart, ’95, often pondered when considering colleges. His top choices were Hillsdale College and Grove City College, but it was a game of pick-up basketball with the captain of the U.S. Debate Team at a Summit Ministries summer camp that helped Nate answer his question. “Go to Hillsdale College.” And so Nate did.
Nate planned to study journalism at Hillsdale, but that quickly changed as he was exposed to the core curriculum. “I couldn’t decide between English, history, and political science,” he said. “Quite frankly, I liked all three subjects, so American studies was a way to study them all.”
He also had an interest in football. With no previous football experience, Nate walked on to the Chargers football team. “I had never put pads on before,” Nate smiled. “I worked hard and learned the sport and figured it out.”
But during the second semester of his freshman year, the wide receiver decided to join the debate team. The debate team came with a lot of travel and work, and Nate found it difficult to keep up with the off-season football training program, debate, and his academics. “It was unlikely that I would make a living playing football,” laughed Nate. “I was more likely to make a living debating people, so that was the end of my football experience.”
In addition to debate and football, Nate was a member of Phi Mu Alpha men’s music fraternity and spent a semester on the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program (WHIP). “I fell in love with politics in Washington,” said Nate. “The Republicans had just taken over the House of Representatives under Newt Gingrich in 1994, which was right after my WHIP semester. I had made contacts in Washington, and they got me lined up with a job after graduation.”
Although Nate didn’t necessarily enjoy his first job in Washington, he stuck it out for a year. “I was working for a think tank,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t just leave because I didn’t want a bad reputation, so I stuck it out and looked for the next opportunity.”
Life-Changing Leaps
Before seeking his next job in Washington, Nate learned that his parents and siblings were planning to spend a year in Scotland studying the Bible. “They never expected me to go with them because I looked settled in Washington, but I figured if I was going to be between jobs anyway, I might as well go along and spend a year abroad.”
While in Scotland, Nate met his wife, Diana, a schoolteacher from Canada who was also studying in the same program as the Stewarts. After the one-year program at King’s Bible College, the Stewart family returned to Cleveland, Ohio, and Nate and Diana soon married. Nate enrolled at John Carroll University to study theology and bioethics. “I was encouraged to get my Ph.D., but we decided it wasn’t the best decision for our family,” Nate added. “We had two small children at the time, and Diana asked who would hire me—A tiny college near a cornfield?”
Instead, Nate decided to get his law degree from Case Western Reserve University, right down the road. After graduating and clerking on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, he assumed he would land a job with a Cleveland law firm, but when that didn’t happen, it was back to D.C. “I sent my resumé all over Northeast Ohio, but everyone said ‘no.’ I sent my resume to firms in Washington and within 48 hours, I had a job. We decided to move to Washington because we had to eat.”
Nate worked for a large international corporate law firm for four years before joining the Department of Justice in 2011. The Washington, D.C., area had become home, but things changed after 2020.
The Move
“We had friends in Hillsdale, and Diana and I thought we could move to Hillsdale someday and not feel like we have no one,” said Nate. “So that was on the distant radar. But then, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we were all teleworking from our kitchens in Washington for months, so I asked my boss, ‘Do you care which state my kitchen is in?’”
Nate determined he could keep his job with the DOJ and work remotely. In the summer of 2022, the Stewarts and their three children moved into the former Delta Tau Delta house across the street from College Baptist Church. “We looked at the house, and we immediately realized it was an opportunity to restore an old home right on campus,” Nate said. “Homes like this are a small fortune in the Washington, D.C., area, so the house was a dream fit. It was an all-around great opportunity that we didn’t think was going to come along anytime soon.”
Nate said his family can breathe in Hillsdale—spiritually and intellectually. “The people in this community have been really great to get to know,” he said. “We’ve made a lot of friends.”
Growth through Fine Art
Art has been a medium to foster some of their relationships. Nate has always had an appreciation for art. “My love of art started as a hobby,” he added. “When I was a student at Hillsdale, I took a one-credit seminar course on R.H. Ives Gammell paintings that came to campus for an exhibition. That may be when I first became interested in understanding art.”
During graduate school, Nate became friends with an Ohio artist who helped him understand the art world a little more. “He paints some wonderful landscapes and American scenes with old barns,” said Nate. “I really enjoyed them, but I couldn’t afford them. I told him when I had a real job someday, I would buy one. And in 2010, I was able to make that purchase.”
The new painting hung over his couch, and immediately, everything else in the room seemed different. “That led me to need another painting,” laughed Nate. “I reached out to former Hillsdale art professor Sam Knecht because he was unveiling his piece, The Signing of the American Constitution, at the Kirby Center in D.C.”
Nate came across Knecht’s studies and drawings and purchased one of his charcoal sketches of George Washington. From there, Nate purchased a Knecht original painting and made it his mission to support living artists “who are working in the old masters tradition and who are trying to keep the skillset alive. They’re speaking through their art to the world in a way that conveys truth, beauty, story, and tradition,” he said. “I decided that the effort they were undertaking was one I wanted to support.”
Nate enjoys sharing his art collection for others to see and ponder, both in his home and on campus. He worked closely with the College to exhibit much of his collection in the Fine Arts Building in early 2025. He also hosts an annual “art salon” sponsored by the Future Alumni Association, where non-art faculty professors lead discussions with students about paintings. Nate called it “great fun and an honor.”
Nate doesn’t have a favorite living artist, and what he looks for in a painting has evolved over the years. “I look for things that tell the human story, that tell me something about human nature, humanity, tragedy, Biblical stories—that give me a new insight into something ancient,” he said. “If an artist can capture an emotion in a way I hadn’t thought about before, that speaks to me.”
Three years after moving to Hillsdale, the Stewarts have transformed the Delt house into their home. Nate still works for the DOJ and continues to foster his love of art through events at the College. Diana stays active with friends and family and continues to work with students as a substitute teacher at Hillsdale Academy and other area schools.
In many ways, Nate’s path has unfolded through transformative moments shaped by family, education, career endeavors, and art. For the Stewarts, the move to Hillsdale is more than a relocation—it’s the last stop and one that feels full circle. They did indeed happily settle in a small town near a small college next to a lot of cornfields.
Stephanie Gordon, a lifelong Hillsdale native, is the managing editor of Virtue and Valor: The Official Blog of Hillsdale College. She is married to chiropractor, Dr. Matt Gordon, and has three children – Eloise, Flora, and Jack. She enjoys baking, floating on Baw Beese Lake, Detroit Lions football, and breaking a sweat at the gym.
Published in December 2025
