Valedictory to 1960

GENTLEMEN OF THE GRADUATING CLASS: You and Dartmouth today come to the end of a four-year effort to make a difference in the most important thing in the world to you, yourself. That I suggest, gentlemen, is what "all the shooting" has been about.

None of us knows, neither your parents nor your teachers, least of all yourself, just how much difference these four years have made in you. The curtain separating today and tomorrow stands between us and knowing that. We can only know that we who serve Dartmouth have cared and will always care more about what you are than can ever be said as between men without risking the weakness of sentimentality. For four years our lives have been committed to your growth; from here on these years of our lives and in truth all the lives that have built and served Dartmouth are bet on you, on all that you are and on all that you do.

Your days as an undergraduate are now closed, but out of them comes for Dartmouth men the lifetime joy and strength of returning, literally and figuratively, to all that this College stands for in the ages and in you. In that returning you will learn for yourself the truth of Scripture that "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

For all the strength of our individuality, our independence, our competitiveness, and for all the sickliness of our suspicions, our insecurities, our arrogance and our aggressions, it comes home to us at any leave-taking between teacher and student that we have learned to look to each other more than we realized. May this truth never be lost to either of us.

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