Valedictory to 1959

GENTLEMEN OF THE GRADUATING CLASS:

I speak these few final words on behalf of all who because they cared made possible the Dartmouth careers you have now completed. If only one thing were to be said at this point I should want it to be this: "Go and care likewise."

Henceforth the quality of your caring will determine all else. As the Scripture has long foretold, "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Most of you have it in you to go far, some very far; from here on for each of you the great issues each morning will be whether you will and whither. All else, good and bad, will follow.

As you and life teach each other - and it will be both ways - you will find yourself increasingly disenthralled with that spoken and unspoken adolescent rejection of all things difficult - "I couldn't care less." Your acquired distaste for such self-deception will mark you a man when being a man matters. It is because she cares that what you are and what you do will always matter greatly to Dartmouth.

And now, men of Dartmouth, the word is "so long," for in the Dartmouth fellowship there is no parting.