James T. Cleland - "Our Rememberable Day" Founders' Day (December 11, 1966)
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| - | Let us pray. | 0:26 |
| Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 0:29 | |
| be acceptable in thy sight. | 0:34 | |
| Oh Lord. Our strength, and our Redeemer. | 0:38 | |
| Amen. | 0:43 | |
| This has been a proper Founder's Day service | 0:52 | |
| up until now. | 0:57 | |
| There has been an academic ecclesiastical procession, | 1:00 | |
| which ought to be part of the service, every Lord's day. | 1:05 | |
| There have been two great hymns, | 1:11 | |
| one of praise and one of Thanksgiving and a mighty Anthem. | 1:14 | |
| There have been the recognition of God, | 1:22 | |
| the confession of our creature hood and separation, | 1:25 | |
| the assurance of reconciliation and the response in | 1:30 | |
| gratitude. | 1:35 | |
| There has been the reading of the word. | 1:37 | |
| There is no need for a sermon. | 1:43 | |
| And yet custom and youths and | 1:48 | |
| the left-handed dictionary, | 1:53 | |
| 95 cents in the Gothic bookshop, demand a sermon. | 1:56 | |
| We have been commemorating Founder's day. | 2:03 | |
| And one definition of commemorate is to remember with | 2:08 | |
| auditory, auditory has been defined again, | 2:13 | |
| the left-handed dictionary as platitudes with personality. | 2:20 | |
| Robert Louis Stevenson has remarked, | 2:28 | |
| I could never understand how a man dare to lift up his voice | 2:31 | |
| in a cathedral. | 2:37 | |
| What is he to say? | 2:40 | |
| That will not be anticlimax. | 2:42 | |
| This morning the anticlimax will be nullified | 2:47 | |
| by the hallelujah chorus. | 2:50 | |
| All this sermon six to do is to vocalize the unspoken, | 2:54 | |
| perhaps the unthought memories of old and young in the | 3:00 | |
| Duke community, on December the 11th. | 3:05 | |
| Remembrance is one of the resources which keep a person | 3:11 | |
| alive. | 3:16 | |
| Otherwise he lives a cut flower existence. | 3:19 | |
| The morning mission Joshua 4:1 to 10, | 3:24 | |
| suggested that. Miraculously, | 3:28 | |
| the children of Israel had crossed the Jordan and set foot | 3:31 | |
| in the promised land. | 3:35 | |
| Joshua, the commander in chief, | 3:38 | |
| one of two men still living who could wear the red sea metal | 3:43 | |
| had set up a care as a Memorial to the event. | 3:50 | |
| He spoke a few words. | 3:54 | |
| When your children ask you in time to come, | 3:58 | |
| what do these stones mean to you? | 4:05 | |
| Then you shall tell them. | 4:09 | |
| So these stones shall be to the people of Israel, | 4:14 | |
| a memorial, forever. | 4:17 | |
| Israel looked back to understand its history, | 4:21 | |
| to draw inspiration for its present and to | 4:27 | |
| project its future. | 4:31 | |
| That kind of remembrance is central in the yearly | 4:34 | |
| celebration of the Passover. | 4:38 | |
| Again, the children ask, what do you mean by this service? | 4:42 | |
| And again, the grownups tell them. | 4:49 | |
| They remember and become strong. | 4:54 | |
| That is what the choir sang for us in the Anthem. | 4:58 | |
| Let us now praise famous men. That is at the heart of the | 5:02 | |
| Christian faith in the service of the Lord's supper. | 5:07 | |
| This do in remembrance of me. | 5:12 | |
| The Judeo Christian tradition, | 5:18 | |
| which is one of the strands of Western civilization | 5:21 | |
| is in part a strand of memory. | 5:25 | |
| Now that should not be hard for us who | 5:31 | |
| are Americans to appreciate, | 5:33 | |
| think of how our national holidays look back | 5:36 | |
| Thanksgiving day, George Washington's birthday, | 5:39 | |
| July four, November 11. | 5:44 | |
| Memory does something to us. | 5:49 | |
| It makes us aware of the rock from which we were hewn | 5:53 | |
| and the quarry from which we were digged. | 5:58 | |
| It stiffens our spines, it establishes | 6:02 | |
| our confidence for we are saved by memory as | 6:05 | |
| well as by hope, saved that is made healthy. | 6:10 | |
| Our tradition looks backward as well as forward. | 6:17 | |
| It looks forward because it has looked backward. | 6:21 | |
| It knows it has roots. | 6:27 | |
| It grows because of rather than despite these roots. | 6:30 | |
| Jan Berry in his famous directorial address, | 6:38 | |
| courage to the students of St. Andrew's university, | 6:42 | |
| said in the first paragraph, | 6:47 | |
| God gave us a memory. That we might have roses in December. | 6:50 | |
| Roses in December. Roses on December 11th. | 6:58 | |
| Roses blooming again, because of memory. | 7:05 | |
| That is the why of our celebration today. | 7:11 | |
| Now who are the folk we remember today. | 7:18 | |
| They fall into various groups, | 7:22 | |
| all important, many dead, | 7:25 | |
| but still speaking. First that are those who gave us the | 7:29 | |
| university, and our litany of commemoration, | 7:34 | |
| we recognize that not all their surnames, were Duke. | 7:39 | |
| The Dukes father and sons built on a | 7:45 | |
| foundation, which other men laid, a good foundation, | 7:49 | |
| second confidence and with care, | 7:56 | |
| repaired in difficult times and wonderful to | 8:00 | |
| relate. Able to bear the weight of a building, | 8:05 | |
| which even that happiest their most fantastic dreams, | 8:09 | |
| never conceived. | 8:16 | |
| And yet they did see, as in a glass darkly, | 8:19 | |
| the shape of things to come. In 1890, | 8:25 | |
| President Crow had plans for a hospital | 8:30 | |
| and a three year medical college. | 8:36 | |
| In 1896, Washington Duke said | 8:39 | |
| that he would give $100,000 for endowment, | 8:42 | |
| if Trinity college would admit women. | 8:47 | |
| Graduate work was talked about in 1900. Long before the | 8:54 | |
| indenture of 1924 old men were dreaming dreams and | 9:00 | |
| young men were seeing visions. | 9:06 | |
| Yet rightly on December 11th, the | 9:10 | |
| anniversary of the 1924 indenture, | 9:14 | |
| we remember the Dukes, and especially James Buchanan Duke, | 9:17 | |
| entrepreneur, man of property, | 9:24 | |
| philanthropists, who decided | 9:29 | |
| and these are his own words, to make the economic resources | 9:32 | |
| of a community administer to its philanthropic needs. | 9:38 | |
| A dream of mine for many years, to make the | 9:45 | |
| economic resources | 9:50 | |
| of a community, administer to its philanthropic | 9:51 | |
| needs a dream of mine for many years. | 9:55 | |
| His name is remembered in both areas, | 9:59 | |
| the Duke power company and the Duke endowment. | 10:03 | |
| It may well be that our university is not named for him. | 10:09 | |
| In 1921, he signed a document planning a university, | 10:15 | |
| which President Few had drafted for him. | 10:22 | |
| One sentence read, | 10:26 | |
| it has been suggested to me that this expanded institution | 10:29 | |
| be named Duke University, as a memorial to my father, | 10:34 | |
| whose gifts made possible the building of Trinity college in | 10:42 | |
| Dedham, and I approve the suggestion. | 10:46 | |
| We know what he did 42 years ago today, he metamorphosed | 10:53 | |
| Methodist Trinity college into our university | 11:00 | |
| and reinforced three other colleges. | 11:06 | |
| Presbyterian Davidson, Baptist Fermin, | 11:10 | |
| and Negro Johnson C. Smith. | 11:15 | |
| We sometimes forget the other three. | 11:19 | |
| Listen to two sentences from our report, | 11:23 | |
| which Davidson college has just published. | 11:25 | |
| This is the first sentence. | 11:30 | |
| The Duke endowment, paid Davidson, a total | 11:33 | |
| of $627,183 in the 1965 calendar year | 11:36 | |
| six two seven, one eight three dollars in 1965. | 11:48 | |
| This is the second sentence. | 11:58 | |
| Since 1924, the Duke endowment has allocated | 12:01 | |
| and appropriated 8 million, three hundred and | 12:06 | |
| thirty eight thousand, two hundred and sixty three | 12:11 | |
| dollars in regular and special gifts to Davidson college. | 12:15 | |
| Eight three three eight, two six three dollars, | 12:23 | |
| for Davidson, since 1924. | 12:31 | |
| He did more than that. | 12:37 | |
| He thought of the sick, and endowed the Duke hospital and | 12:39 | |
| maintained or built hospitals in North and South Carolina. | 12:45 | |
| 194 hospitals were beneficiaries in | 12:51 | |
| 1964. | 12:57 | |
| He remember orphans, 43 agencies engaged in | 13:00 | |
| childcare in the Carolinas benefited in 1964. | 13:06 | |
| He undergirded the Methodist church by pensions to retire | 13:14 | |
| preachers and their widows and orphans, by building or | 13:19 | |
| endowing churches in rural North Carolina, | 13:24 | |
| up to 50% of the cost. | 13:29 | |
| Sure he was tough in mind. | 13:33 | |
| But he was also big of heart. And he being dead | 13:38 | |
| yet payeth, to our benefit. | 13:45 | |
| And when we thank him, | 13:49 | |
| we thank also his father and his brother who also gave and | 13:51 | |
| gave and gave and may well have | 13:57 | |
| influenced James Buchanan Duke, | 14:01 | |
| whose gifts came later than theirs did. | 14:04 | |
| Moreover he inspired his partners to give, | 14:09 | |
| we think he especially of one today, his lawyer, | 14:14 | |
| William Robertson Perkins, | 14:18 | |
| whose name will be given to the library this afternoon | 14:22 | |
| and whose son is chairman of the Duke endowment. | 14:26 | |
| Second, we remember the trustees of both | 14:33 | |
| the endowment and the university. | 14:35 | |
| Sometimes we are angry with them and not always wrongly. | 14:39 | |
| Someone has called them trustees rather than trustees and | 14:45 | |
| Webster defines a trustee as a convict, | 14:50 | |
| considered trustworthy and allowed special privileges. | 14:54 | |
| (audience laughs) | 14:59 | |
| And yet remember that in the historic Bassett case, | 15:01 | |
| the trustees backed Bassett oh not unanimously, | 15:06 | |
| but by a majority in the face of a hysterical press and | 15:12 | |
| an angry culture. | 15:19 | |
| Third, we remember the foundations, | 15:23 | |
| the big ones and the little ones who keep giving | 15:25 | |
| us monetary transfusions. | 15:29 | |
| And we remember industry, which is rallying to us. | 15:33 | |
| And we remember the town of Durham, | 15:38 | |
| which may not be the new Jerusalem, | 15:41 | |
| but it's not as hellish or satanic as we sometimes assert. | 15:44 | |
| And fourth we remember the presidents who have led us. | 15:51 | |
| Kroll, Reformer, Prophet, Gadfly, Kilgo, | 15:55 | |
| exciting, controversial, | 16:04 | |
| enlightened, few, patient, | 16:08 | |
| tenacious, victorious and flowers, | 16:15 | |
| gentle, courteous, dedicated. | 16:21 | |
| I mentioned only the dead. | 16:28 | |
| And fifth we remember the faculty. Jan Berry once | 16:31 | |
| said that while a boy might be better employed than in | 16:37 | |
| going to college, it was his own fault, | 16:40 | |
| if he did not find someone there who set his life off in a | 16:44 | |
| new direction. And he was not thinking of co-eds, | 16:50 | |
| (audience laughs) | 16:55 | |
| oh, there art teachers who are duds, | 17:00 | |
| bombs that have defective fuses, | 17:05 | |
| one we called Sanka, because all the | 17:10 | |
| active ingredients had been removed from the bean. | 17:13 | |
| (audience laughs) | 17:17 | |
| He once was an undergraduate, but there are others. | 17:21 | |
| The choir sang about them in the words of Yeshua, Ben SIRA, | 17:27 | |
| men of learning for the people. | 17:31 | |
| Wise in there words of instruction, | 17:35 | |
| composers of musical errors, | 17:38 | |
| authors of poems in writing. | 17:41 | |
| I knew them in Glasgow, and at union theological | 17:45 | |
| seminary in New York. | 17:49 | |
| I know them at Duke, so do you. | 17:53 | |
| We are their students, their sons and daughters. | 17:58 | |
| And last we remember the students. | 18:05 | |
| We can't live with them, and we can't live without them. | 18:08 | |
| When they're at their best, | 18:14 | |
| we older folk wish we had been like them. | 18:16 | |
| When they're at their worst, | 18:21 | |
| we recall that sometimes in attitude, if not, indeed, | 18:23 | |
| we were like them. | 18:30 | |
| We have a goodly heritage. | 18:34 | |
| Let us not be transient said Duke, | 18:36 | |
| who accept the past casually, cruelly, cussedly. | 18:40 | |
| Let us be heirs who inherit, gladly and gratefully. | 18:48 | |
| The left-handed dictionary defines the founding fathers | 18:55 | |
| as dead revolutionists. | 18:58 | |
| They were revolutionist. | 19:03 | |
| They are dead most of them, | 19:06 | |
| but they had great ideas and high hopes, | 19:10 | |
| and they have given us our reputation for being different. | 19:16 | |
| It's a noble inheritance it's ours, ours, all ours. | 19:23 | |
| That is the "what" of our celebration today. | 19:28 | |
| Now, whether do we go from here? | 19:35 | |
| A wise kunard line captain one said that tradition is good | 19:40 | |
| ballasts, but poor cargo, good ballasts, | 19:46 | |
| but poor cargo. That's worth remembering. | 19:51 | |
| And yet our academic tradition is more than ballast. | 19:56 | |
| It is motivating power. | 19:59 | |
| We cannot repay the past, though we can | 20:02 | |
| remember it as we are doing, but | 20:05 | |
| we can purchase the future. | 20:09 | |
| Let me make a suggestion or two. | 20:13 | |
| Alexander Walcott was introduced to an Amherst | 20:16 | |
| college audience by a presiding officer | 20:20 | |
| whose closing words to him were, | 20:22 | |
| we don't know how to thank you for coming to us. | 20:25 | |
| And Walcott's first words were, ever since the phinitians | 20:32 | |
| invented money, there has just been one way. | 20:37 | |
| (audience laughs) | 20:41 | |
| I know that Holy writ says that the love of money is | 20:46 | |
| the root of all evil. | 20:50 | |
| There's also truth in an addition to that verse, | 20:54 | |
| the lack of money is the root of all evil. | 20:58 | |
| I accept that not merely as a Scot, but as a Christian. | 21:03 | |
| (audience laughs) | 21:08 | |
| Money is the raw material of good works for God and man. | 21:11 | |
| Man shall not live by bread alone or by money alone, | 21:18 | |
| but he won't live long without either. | 21:25 | |
| I like what Emerson said about it. | 21:30 | |
| Money which represents the pros in life, and | 21:33 | |
| which is hardly spoken of in parlors | 21:38 | |
| without apology, is in its effects and laws | 21:41 | |
| as beautiful as roses. | 21:46 | |
| As beautiful as roses in December. | 21:52 | |
| Duke University needs money. | 21:58 | |
| Lots of it. More than the Duke endowment can give us. | 22:01 | |
| One way to repay the past is to buy the future | 22:07 | |
| in the present. | 22:13 | |
| Another suggestion is service. | 22:16 | |
| Maybe some years before we can give of our surplus out of | 22:18 | |
| our savings to the university, | 22:22 | |
| but we can give of our time and of our interests and alumni | 22:25 | |
| associations in committees to choose the end year, | 22:30 | |
| be Duke scholars, | 22:35 | |
| in advisory capacities for the selection of | 22:38 | |
| students for the professional schools. | 22:40 | |
| And one day, for some of you, in the acceptance of an | 22:45 | |
| invitation to be a trustee. | 22:52 | |
| Money and service are symbols and seals of our gratitude to | 22:57 | |
| those who made Duke, and who in part made us. | 23:03 | |
| They are the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for the | 23:10 | |
| good we have been given here. | 23:15 | |
| That is the wither of our celebration today. | 23:18 | |
| In my own Alma mater, the university of Glasgow, | 23:25 | |
| that is an annual service for the commemoration of | 23:30 | |
| benefactors. | 23:34 | |
| The principle, that is the present, reads the role of | 23:36 | |
| benefactors, beginning with William Turnbow, | 23:41 | |
| Bishop of Glasgow, who in 1451 obtained a bull. | 23:46 | |
| I need it from Pope Nicholas the Fifth, | 23:55 | |
| establishing a university. | 23:59 | |
| And I quote with all the liberties, | 24:02 | |
| immunities and privileges appertaining to | 24:06 | |
| the University of Bologna. | 24:11 | |
| The recital ends with these words, | 24:16 | |
| for all who have their good will and time pass have thus | 24:20 | |
| enrich the university. | 24:24 | |
| For all who by their devotion to true learning, | 24:27 | |
| have increased her fame and usefulness and have kept her | 24:31 | |
| light shining before man, | 24:35 | |
| for all her sons and daughters who have gone out from this | 24:39 | |
| place to fulfill in the world, | 24:43 | |
| the work for which they were here prepared. | 24:46 | |
| For all who love our ancient house and seek her good. | 24:50 | |
| Let us now bless and praise Almighty God. | 24:56 | |
| Let us use these words, as our closing prayer. | 25:02 | |
| Let us remain standing as we praise God in | 25:06 | |
| the hallelujah chorus. | 25:09 | |
| And then let us receive the blessing of God. | 25:11 | |
| So let it be. | 25:16 | |
| For all who of their Goodwill in time past have enriched our | 25:24 | |
| University, for all who by their devotion to true learning | 25:27 | |
| have increased her fame and usefulness, and have kept her | 25:32 | |
| light shining before men, for all her sons and daughters | 25:37 | |
| who have gone out from this place to fulfill in the world, | 25:43 | |
| the work for which they were here prepared, | 25:47 | |
| for all who love our house, and seek her good. | 25:51 | |
| We bless and praise by holy name, | 25:57 | |
| Almighty God, forever and ever. | 26:00 | |
| Amen. | 26:06 |
