Susquehanna President Jay Lemons
2005 Commencement Speaker

Chancellor Ern, members of the UVa-Wise Board, Messrs. Pippin and Gott, faculty, staff, students, parents, and friends, it is a great pleasure to be with you on this high plateau beside the lake on the old Poor Farm, where Mr. Jefferson’s dream found life and expression some 50 years ago. Most importantly, good morning UVa-Wise Class of 2005!

As I recall from the other nine graduations I have shared here…Blackberry winter seems to have reached its end. Hallelujah for this glorious day! It is great to be back home and I want to express my thanks to Chancellor Ern for the invitation to be with you and more importantly, I want to thank you, Ernie and Petie, for coming here to care for and lead this institution, which means so much to all of this great part of the Commonwealth and especially to those gathered here on the Lawn beside the Lake. You are a true Virginia gentleman, a great and caring steward of Mr. Jefferson’s mountaintop academical village and you are owed a great debt of gratitude for your willingness to serve this year. Ernie and Petie, will you please stand let all of us thank you for being here during this time of transition in the life of the College?

Ernie has been a friend of ours since we arrived in Virginia in 1988. We felt as if we knew Ernie earlier than that through our mutual friend, Dr. John Koldus of Texas A&M. Marsha and I learned much from these two outstanding men. Ernie and Petie were among those folks who helped us to find our way as newcomers to the Old Dominion. Ernie, as you know, has been interested in Southwest Virginia since the 1950s when he was introduced to the wonder of these mountains in his academic life as a geologist. It is hard to have predicted that his extraordinary career would include this chapter, but we are all so very grateful and the College the better for this service.

During my years here as chancellor, Ernie helped in many ways. Among the ways he helped was in securing commencement speakers. We conspired several years ago to hope that we might lure one of his former student leaders, Katie Couric, to come to Wise. The fates prevented that from happening, but when Ernie found himself here and with the responsibility for arranging for commencement, as you know, he invited Katie to come. Unfortunately she is not able to be here with us today.

Ernie, I hope we can keep working on Katie as she would be a great speaker for the College. Indeed given the important role her late sister, Emily, played in the name change deliberations in the Virginia Senate in 1999, the Couric connection and legacy of support is one that I hope Katie will one day carry on.

While Katie is not here, I did think that it might be appropriate to share with you one of what I understand is among her favorite jokes. You know the snail is among the slowest moving creatures in God’s entire kingdom. Its laborious and deliberate movement fails to produce exciting video, even when time-lapsed photography speeds thing up. Well, do you know what the snail said when he crawled up on the back of the turtle? – “Whee!”

It truly is great to be here. I remember so well my first faculty meeting in August 1992 in the Chapel of All Faiths. Truth is, my knees were really knocking as I stood before you as a 32-year-old interim chancellor. I recall – worried that my voice might not project – asking if the folks in the back of the room could hear me and Mike O’Donnell (who was among them) vigorously shook his head negatively. Immediately, six people in the front row got up from their chairs and headed to the back row!

I can’t help but laugh when I recall another meeting in the Chapel involving the staff of the College. I noted that one of our staff had peacefully closed his eyes and was into a sound slumber. I quietly walked away from the podium and put my hand on the shoulder of Billy Ray Davis, who without missing a beat, immediately jumped to alertness and assured me that he had simply been praying! Well we certainly needed prayers then as we still do, but I never imagined the good Lord confusing a symphony of snoring for prayer.

I’ll never forget the kind farewells you shared with us as we left in December 2000 and I have never ever thought of the UVa-Wise version of the story of the Three Wise Men the same after having been treated to the dramatic play-acted version of the faculty—the one where Professor Margie Tucker played the back end of a donkey.

I can’t help but be flooded by memories of wonderful people, forged by a common commitment to this place and the power of education. I am reminded of my first few days in Wise spent in the company of Chancellor Knight and Carroll Dale in August 1992. While I was coming home to a place I’d never been before, it took me only a few hours to know that it was a homecoming. While the topography, the vegetation, and the economy were all different than the high plains desert where I was raised in Western Nebraska, there was an immediate familiarity. This was a place where you were known for life by your high school athletic exploits, this was a place where people stayed connected across generations, this was a place where the fabric of community was bound up in schools and churches and where the centrality of family was cherished. These are proud communities where people care deeply about one another, where hard work is expected and celebrated, and where the beauty and wonder of life is appreciated. Whether this is your home or you came from elsewhere, I hope you have felt at home here and are proud of this region.

Members of the class of 2005, I want to congratulate you on this milestone in your lives. This is a great day for each of you and it is a great day for Southwest Virginia as we celebrate a record-setting graduation class. To all of your families, thank you for the sacrifices you have made in helping these students reach this peak. You should feel great pride in their accomplishments and be confident of their preparation to lead and serve.

Think about all that has happened here and in our world during these past four years. Many of you arrived just a few days before the world changed forever with the tragic events of September 11, 2001. None of us will ever take our security or our freedom for granted again. None of us can ever safely assume that what is happening in distant, unknown parts of the world has little to do with us ever again. Indeed, this peculiar American experiment in democracy was threatened and continues to be so.

As this very nation was being formed by Washington, Jefferson, and the other founders, they understood that this undertaking was new, novel in many ways, and fragile. They understood that they were undertaking a grand experiment. There is simply no question that Jefferson believed it was education that would serve as the keystone for this American experiment in democracy. Remember his words, “If a nation expects to be both free and ignorant in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Think about all of the physical change that has occurred on this campus during the time you have been here. It is extraordinary and exciting for us to witness. It was deep privilege to be here and to dream about a new science building, a new student center, a new plaza, a new softball and baseball field, a completed stadium and field house, a re-routed road, a soon-to-be-restored Crockett Hall, new residence halls, and this beautiful lake. To see it all now just a little more than four years later is truly incredible and to all who helped it happen, thank you!

You members of the class of 2005 have been here during a time of great transformation. For those assembled here who have dreamed, advocated, argued, cajoled, and loved all of these new facilities into a reality throughout the course of the last decade or two, you know what I mean. Mr. Jefferson’s academical village in the mountains has been completely re-shaped in ways that are important and powerful. The campus is now configured to be an ever greater instrument of learning and human transformation.

While these building projects are essential and enormously important, they are secondary to the building that has taken place during these past two, three, or four years among each of you members of the Class of 2005. The most important mission here is to build human capacity, to help each of you to build the intellectual foundation, the knowledge, the wisdom, and the work ethic to construct your own lives.

Members of the Class of 2005, you are the most important building projects that have been constructed during this time. Each of you have built the foundation that is essential to build and sustain families, build and sustain jobs and careers, build and sustain our communities, and, yes, build and sustain our nation. You see, the American experiment in democracy remains fragile. Jefferson’s fervent belief in the necessity of educated citizens remains the keystone of this experiment.

The words of the great anthropologist Margaret Mead have always been meaningful to me. And these words have come to have particular meaning to me: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” You see, I came to understand and bear witness to her belief during the time I was privileged to live and work here.

The seeds for this great institution were sown on December 17, 1953, on a snowy night during a meal shared by Sam Crockett, Lois Tracy, and Mary Thompson at the old Wise Inn. Just nine months later, a great experiment in higher education was undertaken at the old Wise County Poor Farm. Make no mistake, the three Wise men—Fred Greear, Bill Thompson, and Kenneth Asbury—were as audacious as this nation’s founders. They succeeded in creating a socially democratic institution—a public liberal arts college placed within reach of the great people in these high mountains so far removed from the hallowed halls of Richmond.

Never before nor likely ever again will a $10,000 appropriation by the state go so far... the best investment ever made by the state. This institution began with the support of a small band of educational missionaries that included the truly legendary Papa Joe Smiddy. Joe, thank you for all you have done and for all you do. You are simply the best. You and your colleagues in the pioneering generation of faculty and the building generation who joined you in the 1960s and 70's and those who serve now have all tremendously enhanced the quality of life here and for thousands of families.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” Think about the three Wise men and all the others who joined them here: Darden, Wyllie, Qullen, Polley, Crockett, Wharton, Smiddy, Lipps, Knox, Cambell, Botts, Kegler, Lewis, Henson, Low, Sturgill, Roberson, Holten, Knight, Culbertson, Gilbert, Gilliam, Cantrell, Long, Bacon, Wampler, Phillips, Kilgore, Puckett, Pippin, Wolf, Juhan, Harris, Blackburn, the Mahonys, Wills, Willis, and Willis, Wells, Ely, Kennedy, Edwards, Daniel, Daniels, Ewing, Cox-Combs, Adams, the Heises, Gembach, Shelton, Peake, Baird, Sheldon, Wilson, Weitzman, Portuondo, Scholnick, Yun, Dale, Ramseyer, Beatty-Richmond, Slemp, McGlothlin, Street, Fowler, Stallard, Hunnicut, Jackson, Nicewonder, Hemphreys, Gott, Green, Rigg, Colyer, Smith, and the list goes on and on.

Let the ripples on the surface of the lake grower larger and larger as each of you and the College continues to have your influence felt positively on the world.

Class of 2005, never doubt that you can make a difference. Be thoughtful, be committed, and know that we most often need to work with others to truly change the world. Be the authors of your own audacious plans. Seek out thoughtful and committed citizens to help you. You can change the world. If you doubt it, look around you…here is your proof. Here is a place where, as Papa Joe would say, "Dreams find legs." You can change the world.

Graduates, congratulations, may your dreams find legs, good luck, and Godspeed.