Many Voices, One Song
I write this a few days before Commencement 2014. Seniors have finished their academic work. The time they thought would never arrive is racing toward them at an ever-increasing rate.
On Sunday they’ll sing Alma Mater. Same words they’ve sung many times before. Same melody. To those around them the music will be unchanged. But for our graduates, the feeling will be very different. They will be singing it on the day they say farewell to this good place, bid their classmates “safe travels,” and step out into the great world.
When they return they’ll sing Alma Mater as alumni. Same words and sound, but very different vibrations in their souls.
Music is that way. I still remember songs that were popular when I was in Officer Training School in 1971. Are they my favorite tunes? No, they really aren’t. But hearing them on an oldies station transports me to that time.
Earlier today I caught up with Professor Emeritus David Phillips H’83 walking across the mall. He’s excited that he’ll be joining the Class of 1969 at Big Bash for their reunion dinner. He told me, with more than a little pride, that the 1969 guys were his first Commencement. “I might have been too tough in those days,” he said.
As we parted I wondered how he will feel at Big Bash, an honorary alumnus singing Alma Mater alongside his former students.
Moments later I caught up with Professor Tobey Herzog H’11. He was focused—as he has been this time of year since becoming faculty marshal decades ago—on Commencement. He wants it to go right for the guys. But he is retiring after 38 years of teaching at Wabash, and this will be the last time he leads that celebratory march. How will singing Alma Mater feel to him as he stands with the Class of 2014 on the eve of a new chapter in his own life?
I don’t know. What I do know is that we’ll all be singing together—many voices, many feelings, one song.
“Give us this joy forever…”
—Grunge
Tom Runge, Director, Alumni Affairs and Parent Programs