Remarks at the 50th Anniversary Banquet of the Alumni Council, Hanover, June 19, 1963
Carter Strickland '29, President of the Alumni Council: It is a great honor and privilege to have with us our guest of honor, whom we all love, for he is not only the founder of the Alumni Council but its first president. Hop has made great effort to be with us tonight, which is just another indication of his admiration and his love for the Alumni Council.
I received a letter from Hop this spring and naturally I will always treasure it. Among other things he talked about the Alumni Council, and he made this statement: "If I've ever made a contribution to Dartmouth College I think it is in founding the Dartmouth Alumni Council." Well, he's a very modest man, for you and I know that that is only one of a great many contributions he has made and is still making to Dartmouth College. And if I may say so, sir, our admiration and love for you continue to grow, not only for what you stand for but for what you have done for Dartmouth and continue to do for her
President-Emeritus Ernest Martin Hopkins '01: This isn't a speech. I have a new title. I don't quite know if it's an honor or not. A manuscript was handed to me to review, descriptive of the founding of the Hopkins Center and I read it with increasing enthusiasm up to the final sentence, which read: "The 85-year-old patriarch of Dartmouth arose."
An occasion of this sort is naturally full of associations and recollections and I should want a whole program to myself if I were going to cover it adequately, but I simply want to say that what I wrote to Carter Strickland is true - that I'm not at all sure but what the greatest thing I ever did for Dartmouth was to work for the organization and the formation of this Council. And I won't say that I foresaw this night at the time, for I did not. It wasn't indeed in my conception that the Council could achieve what it has achieved or be what it is, which you represent here tonight. And it is a source of happiness to be here.
In 1916 I took over the reins as the President of Dartmouth with a great deal of modesty and a feeling of great humbleness to be the successor of such eminent predecessors. Tonight I take great pride and satisfaction in being the predecessor of great successors. And, Mr. Dickey, I now call on you.
President John Sloan Dickey '29: This word of benediction on the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the founding of the Alumni Council will not intrude very far into the next fifty years of the Council's history. There are just two things that I think you would want me to say. First, I want to express to you, Sid, the thanks of all of us who work for Dartmouth on her payroll and of that great legion of Dartmouth men, and I ought to say their wives, who have sacrificed for Dartmouth, not just worked for her. We express to you the thanks of people who know that the cause in which they labor could not have been accomplished except for the selfless devotion, and I use both of those words advisedly, you have brought to the cause of Dartmouth as Secretary of the College, as Secretary of the Council, and in many ways as its guide, or shall we say conscience, in the exercise of its responsibilities.
President Hopkins, you've been called a patriarch, you say; you've been called many other things in admiration and in appreciation. Tonight we honor you as the founder of this portion of Dartmouth which provides the products of the College - as you well said, the sole reason for the College's existence - with their most tangible, their most responsible relationship to the College.
Over the years that I have been on this job, at each Commencement supper or luncheon which the College customarily gives to the seniors on their last day in Hanover as undergraduates I have sought to share with them my own understanding of some of the principal factors that go into making the Dartmouth spirit genuinely unique. I've talked about factors which I have come to know in my own life as the central considerations that shaped and still fashion the personality and character of this College. As those of you who have been with me on that occasion know, I refer to the factor of place, which Dr. Tucker taught us is at the heart of the Dartmouth spirit. And then I've talked about the factor of an adventurous founding, which I still find present in the personality and character of Dartmouth. I've also talked about a successful struggle, which it seems to me is present in every great life whether it be of an individual or of an institution - a successful struggle for independence at some point in its existence. The struggle that came early in Dartmouth's life we know as the Dartmouth College Case. And then fourthly, I've spoken about the experience with re-dedication - re-dedication to the deepest purposes of the individual or the institution. This also seems to me essential to the fulfillment of any great life, simply because original purposes tend to run out both in a man and in an institution unless there is present that capacity for re-dedication. We had that under the leadership of Dr. Tucker at the turn of the century.
And, sir, in the main you've been spared on these occasions, as I hope the man in your position is entitled exofficio to be spared, hearing me speak repeatedly of things you know full well. But the last factor I speak of is one which I credit to you. This College, far above all others, not only by our own admission but by the assertion of others, has achieved a sense of identity on the part of its products with the institution - a unique unity of the alumnus and his College in the sense that the individual is fulfilled only as the institution is fulfilled, not merely that the institution is fulfilled through its alumni. This identification, this unity between product and College, is your work as that of no other man. And on this foundation Dartmouth will remain the unique College she is. And for that, sir, we thank you.
