Bill Placher ’70, Byron Trippet ’30, and Pete Metzelaars ’82, to name just a few whose names I’ve heard students and alumni mention during my years here. You no doubt are adding names to this list, even as you read it. Only in knowing the past, in general, and the Wabash past, in particular, can a Wabash student envision his future, imagine the stories ahead of him. He learns what it takes to be a leader from the captains of the football team who address him during the Monon Bell Chapel, from the men who write for The Bachelor or create the one-act plays or earn the summer research awards or travel to China or Greece. He hears these stories and his heart of hearts responds: “That is what I want to do. That is the road I want to travel. That is who I want to be.” He may never put on a Wabash helmet, appear in a play, nor do research in chemistry, but he learns from these athletes and actors and scientists what it means to be tested, to find success and failure, to act out in the public eye the inward grace of a Wabash man.
your life at Wabash, you are not wasting your time in an idle nostalgia. You are taking on, once again, the essential task of the liberal arts: Know thyself. In doing so, you will better understand who you are now and who you will become, in your future and in the future of your College, the life story in which you and the men and women of Wabash will be the heroes who will shape the greatness of the College for years to come.
Contact President White at president@wabash.edu
How can the young men of Wabash know what their stories might become unless they hear the stories of the honored men and women around them, of those who have gone before them? AFTER THE CHALLENGE OF EXCELLENCE celebration at Homecoming in September, a student asked me, “How do I get on the Board of Trustees?” He was not asking how he might contort himself to become like Steve Bowen ’68 or Allan Anderson ’65 or Ted Grossnickle ’73. He was not looking to be a clone or slavish copy. He was asking, “How does the story of my life going forward find the merit and the service that will enable me to become a leader at this College?” When I tell a prospective student, “You will be a hero in your own life,” he needs to believe that his story is not yet written, his future not yet determined. Yet he also needs the lives of others to fuel his dreams, to inspire him to imagine his own future beyond his own past imaginings. The men and women who have shaped this College as alumni, faculty, mentors, leaders, dreamers, and planners provide for him—for our students, for all of us—models of how to live the good life, to be heroes in the great stories of the future. When William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” he noted what we recognize at Homecoming, at Big Bash, and at every Wabash event: The memories of the past shape the dreams of the future. The courage and honor of men and women who have gone before us inspire our best imagination of ourselves, teach us how to be heroes in our lives. In relishing our past in this issue of Wabash Magazine and in your memories of the people and events that shaped
President White talks with Ryan Lutz ’13 in Lilly Library.
Wi n t e r 20 1 3
photo by Jack Parker
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