COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIA
December 8, 2012
By: A. Paul Cadenhead
ONWARD MARCH OF OPPORTUNITY
W
ere I Charles Dickens, I might call today the intersection of the best of times and the
worst of times: best because you receive your coveted degree, and worst because you
receive the degree at the edge of a threatening “fiscal cliff.”
On this day of infinite promise to graduates, against the background of the fiscal cliff,
doubters ask, is education worth the cost and effort, and optimists promise validation of
education by time. This is not a modern dilemma; it has affected other generations. In the cadet’s
prayer at The West Point Military Academy, cadets pray for guidance to “choose the harder right
instead of the easier wrong.” Throughout history of our nation, success has come because in
difficult times leaders chose the harder right over the easier wrong, and Abraham Lincoln
admonishes us to remember that history, or there will be nothing in the future worth
remembering. Close attention to that history of success discloses two recurring themes, akin to
hearing the repeated musical theme in Bedrich Smetana’s Moldau, as the beautiful River grows
from a bubbling spring to a mighty force. The recurring theme in our history might be verbalized
as:
Feeling the Light of Success Even though Events Hide the Light
That theme is suggested by Tagore’s definition of faith, which he defines as a bird that
“feels the light and sings when dawn is still dark.” Today that analogy is apt because you
graduate on the anniversary of our entering world-shattering and world-changing World War II,
and in a current environment of economic uncertainty that obscures light.
There is a second repetitive theme we identify in our history. That theme comes from
Nelson Henderson, who writes that the full value of life is discovered when one plants trees
under the shade of which he will never sit. Listen for both themes in this brief look backwards.
Graduates today stand at a major intersection, where formal classroom intersects with
individual responsibility. Before entering an intersection, we instinctively look both directions.
The ancient Romans even created a God to accomplish this. They created the pagan God Janus
with two heads, enabling him simultaneously to look forward and backward. Our calendar
honors that pagan creation by naming our first month, January, for him, and each New Year we
simultaneously look back across the old year and make resolutions for the new.
So, today let’s look both backward for our basis of hope and forward for the goal of our
promise. We will see that there is much from our past that is not just good because it is old, but is
old because it is good. In that good, and in that promise, let’s listen for the inherent themes
mentioned above.
71 years ago today, before the majority in the audience was born, our nation declared war
on Japan, forever changing our country and the world. At that time West Georgia College was a
small community junior college, only eight years old, having eight years earlier changed from
the A&M School to a junior college. It consisted of only one short driveway, the semicircle drive
known today as Front Campus Drive. The student body was very small, and the male component
would become decimated by the war. Between then and now, my formerly sharecropping family
and many similar families have benefitted beyond measure by attending that small school: two of
my brothers graduated and pursued advance degrees; a sister graduated in 1958 with the first
class graduating here with a four-year degree; and very recently a great-nephew received an
MBA degree from the state-of–the-art College of Business. Today you become alumni, not from
that infant junior college, but from this vast university. As you begin life as an alumnus, I request
that you briefly join with me, an alumnus from that ancient group, as we glance back across the
intervening years. I believe you will join me and recognize real values that survived, like West
Georgia’s “educational excellence in a personal environment.” Again, that value is not good
because it is old, it is old because it is good.
Move even further back in the history of our country. At the birth of our infant country,
our founders faced freedom-denying tyranny and oppression. In that darkness some felt the dawn
of freedom, but others were doubters and yielded to temporary seduction of status quo. Doubters
were derided as summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, but believers, who faced death for
treason, pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, and deprivation of Valley Forge, and are
remembered in history as “founding fathers.” Recognize our theme in Thomas Paine’s writing,
as he felt the light during that foreboding darkness: He wrote:
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine
patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands
by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is
not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the
conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too
lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
“Four score and seven years” later dissidents withdrew from the union to form The
Confederate States of America. Doubters within the states remaining loyal to the Union were
seduced by the easy route of accepting dissolution of the union. Our very survival was threatened,
as hundreds of thousands of Americans were being killed by other Americans. But in the
darkness at the Gettysburg dedication of a burial ground for some of those thousands of dead,
President Lincoln felt the light and proclaimed:
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced . . . .. . . . that government
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The light of dawn followed and today in our Pledge of Allegiance we confirm that we are
a nation “indivisible.”
If you have seen the new Steven Spielberg movie “Lincoln,” you have seen that
Lincoln’s voice was almost alone in urging passage of the 13th Amendment that outlawed slavery
forever.
The twentieth century produced The Great Depression and two world wars, which only a
dwindling few remember. In that Great Depression, wealthy were suddenly made poor and
jumped to death from windows, and employees were forced from assembly lines and into soup
lines. In that darkness, a badly crippled President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his inaugural
address boldly proclaimed “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” But while we were badly
crippled by slow recovery, our nation suffered more than a feared “double dip” depression. A
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powerful enemy suddenly attacked us. On December 7, 1941, 71 years ago yesterday, “a day that
will live in infamy,” Japan invaded us from the air in what is remembered in history as Pearl
Harbor. Vast destruction rained down upon us, and while in a badly weakened condition we were
thrust into World War II. It is now a day that is fading from national memory, because those who
do remember are rapidly passing into history. But for those who do remember, they urge all to
remember, because again Lincoln’s words resonate, if we do not remember that pivotal day, we
will have nothing in the future worth remembering. Therefore, we briefly recall to conscious
memory that 71 years ago today, in the darkness of smoke still rising from sunken ships, bodies
being recovered and tears flowing, President Roosevelt called for war against the invaders, and
proclaimed:
“The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”
We did win an absolute victory, and it forever changed our slowly evolving concept of real
freedom. In the process of winning, women moved from kitchen to munitions assembly lines and
became recognized as “Rosie the Riveter;” teenage boys changed farm overalls to military
uniform; flower gardens transformed to victory gardens; diets willingly adopted meatless
Tuesdays; car owners rationed to three gallons of gas per week; and discretionary income
purchased “war bonds.” All became patriots, and in a moment we shall discuss those who faced
death to win that absolute victory, and laid the foundation for a new interpretation of social
freedom and opportunity.
After war’s dislocations, we returned to civilian life, but realized that America that was
not the same for all Americans. Constitutional amendments following the Civil War had
proclaimed freedom for all, but that freedom was not available to women and citizens of color.
Here President Truman intervened. Feeling that persons who fought a common enemy should be
able to share a common table, he integrated the armed forces. The US Supreme Court and
Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson proclaimed that real freedom meant equality of
education and full access to all public areas. Ordinary citizens risked life and limb in marches
and demonstrations. President Kennedy urged us:
"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”
Writers like Harper Lee in lasting classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” exposed the
ugliness of segregated society, in a country that proclaimed that all are created equal.
From such contrasting venues as jail cells and the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther
King articulated the light of dawn with:
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table
of brotherhood.
The dream became reality, but Dr. King and many lesser-known figures would not
live to witness the dream’s fulfillment. But looking forward to possibilities, they realized the
full value of life by planting trees under the shade of which they would not sit, but under
which we sit today. Now women have leadership positions in business, government, seats in
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Congress, and on the US Supreme Court. Today, an ordinary citizen who because of his color
earlier would have to sit in segregated balconies of county courthouses, now sits as a justice
on the United States Supreme Court. Citizens earlier denied full access to freedom because of
their color have become ambassador, secretary of defense, secretary of state and president of
the United States. Some in your graduating class today will rise to posts of leadership
awaiting them, perhaps finding the cure for cancer, or discovering a social system that will
preclude wars and depressions. Where would we be if our predecessors had succumbed to
the seduction of status quo rather than moving forward while dawn was still dark? Clearly we
sit under trees they planted.
Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy and Dr. King were assassinated, but their mission, charted
in the darkness of the times, should become our mission, guiding us at this vital time when your
formal education intersects with your service opportunity.
Today we have a darkness called poverty, and in this darkness you may be the bird that
feels the light and sings while dawn is still dark. Your speech might be a paraphrase of Dr.
King’s speech, and sound something like this:
I have a dream that one day the children living in housing projects and ghettoes
and children from the mansion on the hill will march together down the aisles of
University of West Georgia to receive their degrees, and will thereafter work
together to erase poverty as a bar to education.
Other persons no less noble than Lincoln, Kennedy and King, have carried the baton of
freedom: These unnamed heroes, now passing from among us, include the generation of your
grandparents and parents. They include veterans of World War II and more recent world and
national struggles. For good reason, they were older than you when they reached the same
milestone you reach today, and their problems were different. Their problem was not student
debt, because the GI Bill had funded their tuition as a sort of repayment for their military service.
They were older than you, because instead of college they had spent their late teenage years in
military, being shot from the air, jumping from airplanes behind enemy lines, manning ships that
were bombarded, and facing enemy fire while slogging as infantry through frozen Europe, and
infested jungles and volcanic ash of the Pacific. Thousands of them, like Presidents Lincoln and
Kennedy and Dr. King, paid with their lives, and more thousands carry burdens of their wounds.
They sought no glory or public office, but without seeking acclaim, have been proclaimed by a
noted author to be The Greatest Generation. You know and love them as father or grandfather,
and I know and love them as classmates and colleagues. Every member of my law school class
was a World War II veteran, and at Emory that class is known as the Class of World War II
Veterans.
Today, on this 71st anniversary of the beginning of that war, I refer to classmates I knew
because they are samples of that large generation of youth. One was a West Point graduate, who
in his first day in combat lost legs, one eye and half his right hand. Another was shot down over
the North Sea and was the sole survivor of his ditched plane. Two had been prisoners of war.
Others could be identified, but you can see the cruel currency by which they paid in advance for
their delayed education. These young heroes overcame the military-enforced delay in their lives
and went on to successful careers: judge on United States Court of Appeals (just one notch below
the US Supreme Court), several federal district court judges, various Superior Court judges,
Georgia’s longest serving district attorney, for whom Fulton Superior Court building is now
named, a Georgia Supreme Court justice, and more.
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Not only did they prepay for their education with the cruel currency of combat, they
looked forward and planted trees under the shade of which they would never sit. Long after
graduation from law school, they recognized that through education they had been moved from
sharecropping and other fields of labor to success in life. They desired to prepay for education of
others whom they would never know, and endowed a permanent scholarship in honor of the
Class of World War II Veterans. It is a real joy to the veterans still living to receive the thanks of
students who graduate because of that scholarship, and who become our professional brothers
and sisters. These veterans are now buried all the way from Arlington National Cemetery to local
plots, but in their parting service, they enjoyed the true meaning of life by planting trees under
the shade of which they never sat.
Learning does not end when you leave campus; learning is a lifetime process and flows
from all sources, and not only from Ph.D. professors. One of the guiding principles of my life
came not from a college professor but from a long ago, lowly, unnamed battle-scarred
paratrooper corporal. He was only one step above unranked trainees. At the time, his instruction
was a simple safety instruction, but its timeless wisdom became imprinted as my pole star. After
other instructors had nearly killed trainees with physical conditioning – if you have seen the
movie Band of Brothers, you know what I mean – we were training for actual jumps. In a
ground-level mockup of a C-47 airplane, the hardened veteran instructed us on proper body
position for a jump. In leaving the plane, we should not look down, because looking down would
cause us to go out head first, risking that our feet would become entangled in the lines or heavy
equipment with which we jumped. Instead, in a jump we should look straight ahead at the
horizon, and then our feet would go down first. His simple instruction was, “You will always
follow your eyes.” That brief statement became my mantra in facing difficult decisions in life;
follow your eyes and you won’t become entangled in temporary problems.
So, as you exit this center of learning, armed with your well-earned degree, go forth,
continue learning, with eyes focused firmly on the horizon of ultimate victory, and you will not
become entangled in the weight of current loads. Seven decades hence, when your horizon
behind, like mine, fades in the mist of time, and your forward horizon looms closer and closer,
the unchangeable guiding star on your horizon will remain there to guide you. I felt that star
earlier this year when Dr. Sethna pinned on me that which he said was the first newly dispensed
“Went West” pin, confirming that, even though separated by decades, you and I are fellow
alumni. That symbol confirms that 70 years ago at this institution I met the one who would
become my wife. In a word I have never left West Georgia, and West Georgia has never left me.
In colorful autumn of my life, as in its verdant spring, I continue enjoying the trees planted by
others, including my beloved Dr. Ingram, the first president of West Georgia, whose grave I
recently visited. To current President Dr. Sethna, for whom this huge university is a living
monument, I say that your tenure as leader of this university is indelibly implanted in the lives of
future leaders of our country. To you graduates and future leaders, we confidently transfer the
baton, knowing that through you the inspiration of West Georgia will compound through time.
So it has been in my life. Together we affirm our gratitude that we “Went West.”
Thank you, and follow your eyes.
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