Provost Morrison

Following are the remarks of the Rev.Fred Berthold Jr. '45, Dean of the TuckerFoundation, who officiated at the memorial service for Provost Donald H. Morison in Rollins Chapel on March 21.

We are gathered here, family and friends, in memory of Donald Harvard Morrison. We are bound together in a deep sense of loss, for seldom has a man touched so many aspects of the life of a community with his wisdom, his strength, his humor, his love. Especially do our hearts go out in sympathy to the family he loved and to which he gave of his own joy and his own sense of the beauty and dignity of life. And yet, though we mourn, we may best honor him by coming together in gratitude for all that he has meant to us - and for all that he still

means. His own manner was not to linger over the sorrows and defeats of the past, however keenly he felt them, but to press on eagerly to the fulfillment of the generous purposes that animated his life. His thought was not to shepherd his own resources, nor to cling to comfort and safety, but to give of himself to those he loved and to the ideals in which he believed.

Dartmouth College has pledged herself to the pursuit of excellence in education. Donald Morrison is a symbol of this immense effort - and more than a symbol. His rich imagination, his mature reason, his unending patience - and, perhaps above all, that personal courage which kept him true to his deepest purpose in spite of opposition - all of these qualities have been given as the foundation of a new Dartmouth which it was his genuine pleasure to serve. We wish, all of us here and countless others whose prayers are here, that we could in some way help in this hour of loss. We cannot undo the loss itself. We can, each in his own way, raise up a living memorial, if we not only honor that for which he strove, but if we commit ourselves again and again to the cause to which he gave so much and which he leaves now in our hands. Let us not be content with anything makeshift or mediocre as we, by the way in which we day by day carry our responsibilities, give shape to the future of liberal education. We are thankful for the example of his life, for the quality of his thought, for the warm humanity of his presence amongst us.

Words are inadequate for what we feel; the hope and prayer of each heart bears the unique mark of personal friendship and love. Let us each one, in the quiet of this sacred place, express in his own way the thoughts and prayers of his heart.