On the Saturday of our 50th reunion

On the Saturday of our 50th reunion, Dartmouth College hosted the Class of 1954 at a luncheon on the magnificent lawn before Baker Library in perfect weather. President Dick Lewis opened with appropriately clever remarks, then introduced President Emeritus David McLaughlin to present the 50th Class Address. As you will see, Dave captured the spirit of the occasion with brilliant wordsmithing and showed some inherent production skills in his coaxing acclaimed Broadway actor John Cunningham to read the inserted quotes from Krishna Menon, John Sloan Dickey and John Fletcher, Class of 1904. Dave's speech follows. Complete coverage of the reunion will be contained in the June newsletter.

Reflections of a Former President

Addressing my classmates, your spouses and families at this auspicious gathering is a challenging task - after all, what can one say to enlighten one of the greatest classes to graduate from Dartmouth!

Perhaps the only qualifying attribute that I have for delivering these remarks is that I have listened to more of these fifty-year reunion addresses than most of you. The one lesson I have learned from these experiences is to keep the remarks short.

As freshmen, we were typically gullible! From a 1950 Alumni Magazine Undergraduate Chair article: “These freshman have been buying pipe racks, obsolete textbooks, malfunctioning desk lamps, college bureaus and tickets to last year's Holy Cross game. They buy andirons, light bulbs, crystal sets, roller shades, green corduroy jackets, stationery. These freshman, if handled right, will buy anything.” It then goes on to relate a lengthy story which I will abbreviate. “One freshman, Harry Robinson, went to a used furniture concession operated by Paul Paganucci ‘53 to look at a desk cheaply advertised. On arrival, he was told that it had been sold, but Paul then began his ‘spin' to convince Harry that his elephant foot waste basket was very rare and specially priced at only $15. At that moment, another student came rushing into the room to look at the elephant foot waste basket, hoping he wasn't too late to purchase it, only to discover that it had just been offered to Harry. The other student said that he would give $20 for it, but Harry said he had already been offered it at $15 and that he would take it! Of course, the other student was Paul's classmate, Fred Whittemore and they had been in cahoots. But Harry maintains to this day that it was a great bargain.

More seriously, when we did our leave-taking on June 13, 1954, we were a Class that left Dartmouth during a hinge-period in history - too young and a little late to serve in the Korean war that ended the year of our graduation and too old to serve in Vietnam. In the 50s and the 60s, we witnessed the end of the Cold War, the race to conquer space and the nuclear arms race. But we were mainly observers of these events, even though almost 30% of our Class entered military service after graduation, receiving commissions through the ROTC programs at the college. It was in our junior year that Stalin died and Eisenhower became President. While we may not have realized it, we stood at one of those determining moments in history.

Through our majors and, more particularly, through the Great Issues speakers such as:

Marquis Childs, the Washington columnist, Barbara Ward of the London Economist,

Krishna Menon, the Indian delegate to the Unite Nations and or own Professor Wing Tsit Chan, who spoke about revolutionary forces at work in the Far East, we were sensitized to the global nature of our charge as citizens on the big stage. Perhaps the most significant national development that occurred during that period, and one in which many of us participated, was the long overdue desegregation of our schools and our society. While our matriculating class had classmates from thirty-eight states and ten foreign countries, we had less than a dozen minority classmates. But, again, change was evident. The year of our graduation was marked by the historic Supreme Court decision on Brown versus the Board of Education. As seniors, we led the vote on campus to remove discrimination clauses in our national fraternity charters. And many of our classmates took prominent roles in sustaining the momentum of racial equality in our communities and in the nation.

I am reminded that, in the autumn of 1953, Thurgood Marshall, the legal counsel for the NAACP prior to his appointment as the first black to serve on the Supreme Court, spoke to our Great Issues class. These are his words:

“I'm through bothering with the old generation. If they want to believe in segregation, let them. It's the youngsters (you and me at the time) who are going to shape the world. I'm proud of American youth - our hope lies with you.”

And then, at the end of his talk, he said:

“Mama taught me a lot. She used to say: 'Boy, you may be tall, but if you get mean, I can always reach you with a chair.' Well, there are a lot of tall mean people around, but the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution is a mighty big chair and I figure I can still reach a lot of them.”

That was liberal learning at its best!!

For those not going into military service, you started your first jobs with an average salary of $3000 to $4000. Since then, we have been a Class that has had remarkable success. I cannot even begin to single out all of our individual achievements. Two of our Classmates - Dick Page and Lo-Yi Chan - will receive well-deserved recognition tomorrow during commencement. But our record of accomplishment as successful diplomats, corporate executives, educators, foundation heads, physicians, clergymen, lawyers - including the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court - is impressive.

Can we trace all of this back to our four years in Hanover? Of course not. But we can relate the events that have shaped our careers and personal lives to the lessons learned on the Hanover Plain. I have just finished a manuscript that is being considered by several publishers tentatively entitled Promises to Keep. In this memoir, which is focused primarily on my years at Dartmouth, I look back at some of the issues of academic governance and how they compared to those in the corporate or professional world. There were a number of lessons learned. At Bill White's suggestion, some of these are incorporated into my letter to the Class in the magnificent More Reflections, edited by Bill. Among those not addressed were two other observations on which I would like to comment.

Since our graduation, we have thrived in a world of change. It is the one constant with which we have lived over the past fifty years. Looking back, I am persuaded that a liberal arts education is a fundamental requirement for success in a society that continually reinvents itself politically, technologically and socially at an ever increasing rate. Our education gave us the ability to think critically, to challenge accepted truths, to adapt and to be a “swinger of birches” - a poem read by Robert Frost to many of us in our senior year when we were sitting at his feet in Sanborn house. In the face of change, we became not only survivors, but also thrives - thriving on the challenges that we faced and finding fulfillment in overcoming them. Our careers thrived and as they did so, we assumed positions of greater responsibility within our professions and within our communities.

While management disciplines between for-profit and non-profit organizations are very different and it is arguable whether they are transferable, there is one common characteristic of these sectors that I found in short supply on this campus and, by extension, elsewhere in our society. This relates to our capacity and ability to respect the opinions of others when disagreements arise. Whether nationally or locally, it is evident that too often, we fail to listen, we fail to consider critically the values of the arguments made by the opposition - we seem to have failed to learn the lesson of how to disagree civilly. The ability to disagree civilly is fundamental not only to the process of liberal learning, but also to the functioning of a democratic society.

It is one of the lessons that I had to learn the hard way during my presidency when dealing with the ROTC issue, divestiture and even the relocation of the Medical Center. But beyond Dartmouth, we have all seen the lack of the capacity for civil dialogue as a challenge to our democratic nation - and to our global society as well. Our country today is divided - politically and ideologically along very narrow fault lines. We are not listening to or respecting the views of those who disagree with us. As we reflect, not only on the past, but more importantly, on the lessons learned for the future, I would encourage all of us to step back, to remember the rigorous dialogue of the Great Issues program, to focus on the democratic values common to our great leaders and, at the end of the day, to assume a leadership role in achieving a more civil society.

This would be a worthy legacy for our great Class.

While much has changed in our lives since we matriculated here fifty-four years ago, much remains the same. The special qualities of Dartmouth: its unique sense of place, the great professors who instill a love of learning, the institutional purposes of this extraordinary college. These remain unchanged.

As John Sloan Dickey said when he addressed his classmates on the occasion of their fifty-fifth reunion in 1979:

“Let us all ... acknowledge that today, as yesterday, this college is the beneficiary of a heritage great in both purpose and spirit. Most especially, being products of this place, let us never lose our awareness, as Mr. Chief Justice Marshall proclaimed now 185 years ago - that we are custodians of Dartmouth's immortality and individuality”.

Immortality and Individuality - what a precious heritage for our keeping!

Let me also share with you the comments of John Fletcher, who gave the 50 year reunion address of the Class of 1904 when he wished our class - the Class of 1954 - Godspeed:

“We of 1904 extend our best wishes and congratulations to the Class of 1954. You have spent four years at Dartmouth which has greater resources than were available to us. The Dartmouth spirit of our time still exits, enriched by the developments of fifty years.

“On May 22, 1852, Daniel Webster, as the guest of the City Council of Boston, delivered an address in Faneuil Hall. He was commenting on the greatness of Boston and was praising its citizens for their many achievements, particularly their support of education. He then said this, a statement which must have been inspired by his four years at Dartmouth: ‘We seek to educate the people; we seek to improve men's moral and religious condition. If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; and if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust. But if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue then with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow men, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.'”

We can wish no more than that for the Class of 2004, to whom on this occasion we deliver our own congratulations and best wishes.

As the Class of 1954, you have brightened all eternity. We have been tested and have made our mark on the well-being or our society.

Let me close as we began at our convocation in 1950 in John Sloan Dickey's admonition:

“And now, Men of Dartmouth, as members of the College, you have three different, but closely intertwined roles to play: first, you are citizens of a community and are expected to act as such; second, you are the stuff of an institution and what you are, it will be; thirdly, your business here is learning and that is up to you.”

On all three counts, you have delivered on that charge.

I congratulate you, but do so with the reminder that our responsibilities are not over - we are not finished. We still have contributions to make - achieving a truly civil society. We still have Promises to Keep.

May God bless America. May God bless Dartmouth College and the members of the Great Class of 1954.

David T. McLaughlin ‘54