What does one say from his University on such a day
as this about the giant of a man we have lost? Of course, Al would
never imagine himself as a giant—that’s the first thing.
But he was a giant of a man for St. Lawrence.
Most of you here can recite the highlights by heart:
Class of 1942 and distinguished student leader, including editorship
of The Hill News; decorated service as an officer in the Navy as
a submariner; leadership of the Alumni Executive Council; trustee;
chair of the Board of Trustees; chair emeritus of the Board; Doctor
of Laws, Honoris Causa in May of 1979, not only for his St. Lawrence
service but in recognition of his outstanding business career; mentor
and sharer of wisdom to at least six St. Lawrence presidents, not
all of whom listened as well as they should maybe!
But what I want to say today is how Al touched people
at St. Lawrence, forever—how his engagement, friendship, and
mentorship changed people and things irrevocably and set the bar
in new places.
Let me start with writing. For Al, great writing was
as central to life as air, food and water, and that meant he was
partial to writers—wanted them to feel and be noticed, to be
able to thrive, to be supported in their sometimes lonely work, and
of course also to benefit from his occasionally very candid appraisals!
He too was an accomplished writer, confident in his ability but humble
in his self-assessment. In addition to his work on The Hill News,
as a student he was a stringer for the Watertown Daily Times, beginning
a lifelong friendship with the Johnson family. Who else would quote
Oscar Wilde at the beginning of his small book of poetry—“All
bad poetry springs from genuine feeling”—and title his
book “A Small Collection of Bad Poetry?”
Al worked tirelessly to raise up the quality of writing
at St. Lawrence and to increase the opportunities our students have
to become writers. He knew our English Department faculty personally,
especially those involved in the teaching of writing, listened to
their needs, came to respect them and their work deeply, and he wanted
our students to have extraordinarily rich opportunities to write.
Al and Elaine’s gift of a house just off campus for our visiting
writer-in-residence, named by the benefactor the Viebranz Visiting
Professor of Creative Writing, helps ensure that our students will
benefit each year from working with a new distinguished writer from
outside the regular faculty, and annually he supported our Young
Writer’s Prize.
My favorite passage from Eben Holden, the
novel of the North Country by another giant Laurentian, Irving Bacheller,
is this:
The north country lay buried in the snow that Christmastime.
Here and there the steam plough had thrown its furrows, on either
side of the railroad, high above the window line. The fences were
muffled in long ridges of snow, their stakes showing like pins in
a cushion of white velvet. Some of the small trees on the edge of
the big timber stood overdrifted to their boughs. I have never seen
such a glory of the morning as when the sun came up, that day we
were nearing home, and lit the splendour of the hills, there in the
land I love.
Al too wrote of the North Country he loved, as in
this line from his poem, “ Adirondack October”:
I love it when the larch turn golden in the fall,
For winter’s silvery silence lies ahead.
And they both wrote of winter, because even superficial
people can love the North Country in the other seasons.
Al helped us see how St. Lawrence must be a university
in and of the North Country, and he also loved Canaras, our Saranac
Lake conference center—a setting where for over 30 years our
trustees have met in retreat, families along, to be strategic about
the University and to forge the relationships that lead best to enlightened,
committed leadership.
Al cared deeply also about physics at St. Lawrence,
and about Al Romer, his friend and teacher when he was a student.
As a physics major devoted also to writing, he was all his life the
embodiment of the liberal arts ideal. Al Romer maintained an office
in the physics department throughout his retirement, and Al Viebranz
would visit him there, and so got to know our physics faculty well.
I can think of no trustee in my long career in higher education who
forged closer relationships with faculty members than Al. A number
of them are with us here today. He was interested in their work,
in them personally, and in knowing their thinking on the University
so that he could serve them and our students better. He was a powerful
influence on the evolution of St. Lawrence into what it is today.
At each step, he helped us to remember that our reason for being
is the education of young people in the liberal arts, and that students
must always be at the heart of our work. How wonderful, how unusual
in the higher education of America today, how lucky we all have been.
At Tuesday’s faculty meeting, the faculty adopted a resolution
in Al’s memory, which they will convey separately to Elaine
and her family.
Veteran faculty members, of course, remember his mischievous
leadership of limerick contests during long Commencement addresses.
What justice, then, when Al himself became the Commencement speaker
in 1979! Only our most senior faculty know whether limerick making
was afoot during Al’s memorable address, but I bet it was!
And he truly was mischievous in so many ways, including the letter
he sent me shortly after I arrived as president over the pseudonym
Alfred C. Viligent (did he mean Vigilent?), from the Washington headquarters
of “Men on the March.” If you look around you will see
smiles on the faces of some trustees and spouses—that’s
all I am really free to report on this matter, given the litigation!
When we were together, there was always some talk
of politics, or the latest book he was reading. Blissfully, he would
send me copies of the books he thought were best and most urgent
to my betterment, and we would talk about them when my reading eventually
caught up with him. He was, as you know, a decorated Navy veteran,
an experience which made him very cautious and skeptical about war
as an instrument of politics, though he was a realist about the dangers
of our world today. He had so much that was wise to share. I am profoundly
grateful that we had these few years together so that I could have
a piece of what many others had for so much longer.
For Ann and me, Al was and Elaine is a mentor. They
helped us understand the St. Lawrence of today, and how it came to
be; they encouraged us and lifted our spirits in challenging times;
they inspired us in all of the ways the best people do. Al’s
passing leaves a hole in our hearts. St. Lawrence students, faculty,
staff and alumni have lost a great, irreplaceable friend.
Irving
Bacheller, Eben Holden: Tale of the North Country (Wordsworth
Editions Limited, Cumberland House, Crib Street, Ware, Hertfordshire:
1996), 196.
