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“Birthday Bash” |
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On a day in August, 1931, my mother took all the money I had earned from a summer’s work, put it with what she had been able to save, and handed it to Dr. C. H. Kimbrough, professor of Sociology doubling as registrar of the University of Tulsa. He assured her it would apply to the first semester tuition of $100. “Keep up your courage, “he said, “You never know how far $25 can go.” He was correct. You don’t know. Those twenty-five dollars have brought me to this day, May 19, 2004. But not without the kindness, support and encouragement of hundreds- maybe thousands of people: -some of whom are in this room today, others are not. To all of you and them I owe thanks. Ninety is just an accumulation of days unless there is reason to make a mark on the calendar. My days, as you all know, have been marked on the University Calendar. They have only seventy-three years—thirty- on to date. Ellen, early on, recognized that she and our family were inseparable from the university. There is no way to distinguish between family members: all of whom merit thanks, and those quasi family members who have aided and abetted whatever the chore: making costumes or scenery for the theater, carrying baggage when we’re chasing trains in Italy, or getting programs on the air for KWGS – enabling dreams of our university. I can call most of you by name; I can – in some instances – recount what you did. Will you forgive me if I don’t? On this occasion I would rather talk of the purpose that binds us together, the purpose that brings us to this day and other days like it. Sometime after I became a freshman, in an English Course, called Introduction to Drama, a course taught by Franklin Eikenberry, I met Sophocles play, Antigone, with its chorus of elders, for the first time I hear them sing, “Wonders are there many, but none more wonderful than man.” Sophocles names some of the wonders: “Speech and wind-swift thought and all the moods that mould a state, has he taught himself. Without resource he meets everything that comes; from baffling maladies he has devised escapes, only against death shall he call for aid in vain. Cunning beyond fancy’s dream is the fertile skill which brings Man now to evil, not to good.” One day you go to class and your life never again is the same. The man at the front of the class in a three piece brown suit might have been gowned in an Oxford grey robe with an ermine- edged hood of blue; Red brick Kendall Hall might have been the marble theater at Epidaurus; the drought stricken soil of Oklahoma might have been the isles of Greece. I knew then I wanted knowledge. No just an education but something – still amorphous and undefined – something, somewhere, where and thoughts and language like that were commonplaces; somewhere where they knew all kinds of other things and were willing to share. “Wonders are there many, but none more wonderful than man.” I learned that the psalmist responds contrapuntally. The days of our age are threescore years and ten: and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years and ten, yet is their strength then but labor and sorrow, so soon passeth it away, and we are gone. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. I’ve numbered the days in 73 years. I know I’ve spent them here. I know I’ve walked this campus to so many familiar places that my feet should leave marks like those ruts still visible, left by the wagon trains at the crossings of the Snake and Platte rivers on the Western migration. Crossing the “U” at nightfall By daylight, the wonder’s changed: Someone is lazy practicing: After a meeting, as we walk to our cars, To wonder – to muse – to dream. And at long last, if it is meant,
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