Illinois College Commencement
Fire in the Belly
Thank you, Dr. Pfau. Quote often attributed to S’peare. Actually.. written by me .. 1967.. 2nd floor Gardner. (Huh?)
First introduction at Illinois College.. years ago for a Convocation… “Hey! Quiet! The sooner we get started, the sooner we can get out of here. Here’s Ken Bradbury.”
Actually.. not the first time speaking for the student body. First.. 1970 .. Intersociety debate.. Pi Pi Rho versus our arch rival, Sigma Pi. “Resolved: That the Electoral College system should be abolished.” (Out of all the exciting issues in the 60’s and 70’s, we settled on that old dog of a topic.) We had wired Senator Charles Percy for evidence.. My partner and I waited at the Western Union office until 9:50 a.m. for a 10 o’clock debate. Nothing arrived. I grabbed a blank piece of yellow Western Union telegram paper, hurried back to Rammelkamp just as they were singing the alma mater, right between Ivied Beecher and Sturtevant, we entered, and I madly waved the counterfeit telegram in the air for an hour. Actually, the information I was adlibbing was much better than anything Senator Percy could have sent us. We won the debate. My partner is now a newspaper editor and a Baptist Sunday School teacher in Carrollton Illinois. He has repented. I am a Presbyterian. I have not. I can vaguely remember my graduation from Illinois College. I opened my diploma to find it empty, and a note from J.T. VanHorn, business manager.. a mean-looking little man.. “You have not paid your library bill. Please present this note and the above fee at the registrar’s office before you leave today.” Alright… It’s hot, you came to graduate, let me get to my point. It’s about Bob. The night I first met Bob, he was galloping around the stage wearing a cowboy hat and boots and was carrying a woman on his back while singing, “The Cowboy and the Farmer should be Friends!” Bob is a painter by trade…church steeples, houses, barns, schools, museums…He lives just three blocks from where you’re sitting now. During the day Bob Large dresses in pure painter’s white but when nighttime falls, he puts on a beard, ragged pants, a soiled shirt, dips his feet into a bucket of mud and goes onstage as one of Abraham Lincoln’s friends from New Salem, Illinois … or at times he dyes his hair black and tours the area schools bellowing the powerful poetry of Vachel Lindsay… or he weeps in A Trip to Bountiful as a son bringing his mother to her birthplace before she dies. Bob is a perfectionist … a wild, uninhibited, perfectionist. And forgive me, Bob, but you’re a bit of a nut case. Whether he’s clinging to the top of a courthouse bell tower painting the strip that’s too dangerous for his employees to reach, or trudging with me down Michigan Avenue in Chicago because we can’t find the theatre in which we’re to perform that night, Bob goes all the way. In the Lincoln play, he portrays Jack Kelso, a rugged, wooly, devil-may-care heathen. Not satisfied with the artificial effects of makeup, Bob mixes his own brand of mud from his cabin at Franklin, Illinois, totes it 40 miles in his painting truck, and when he walks onstage, his legs are covered with the messy gook halfway to the knee. When I asked him if this ever causes him a problem when it comes time to dance, Bob answers, “Heck yes! It’s a mess! But it’s real!” Bob has a serious condition that he calls Fire in the Belly. After a long day in the hot sun painting a house, he’ll look at young actor, tired from a day of sleeping in and watching Oprah, square in the eye and say, "I can’t believe I’m having this much fun!” then walk onstage to wrestle Abraham Lincoln to a draw. Fire in the belly. That’s Bob’s motto. You gotta have fire in your belly. An enthusiasm for what you’re going right here, right now. A burning desire to live life to the fullest. Bob doesn’t know Helen, but he should. Imprisoned in a wheelchair by MS as a young woman, Helen is now in her seventies, lives on a farm near Chapin, and lifts concrete blocks up to her husband as he works as a builder. This lady who once could not even lift her legs could today beat most of us in a footrace. Helen’s cure? Complete trust in God and Fire in the Belly . . . a totally unreasonable, illogical feeling that life is so very, very good. Helen Keller wrote, “We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all—the apathy of human beings.” Apathy kills.. it kills an idea.. it kills a dream. John Glenn returned to space this year with the crew of Discovery. After their shuttle had landed at Cape Canaveral, it took a long time before the astronauts emerged to take their traditional walk-around of the spacecraft on the runway. The reason? The 77-year-old Glenn was having gravity problems and was feeling wobbly. Watching the news that night, we all noticed that Glenn was a bit unsteady as he walked around the craft. The next day at a news conference Glenn was asked if he had considered not making the customary walk. He answered simply, “If I would have been on my hands and knees, I was going to do it.” John Glenn has fire in his belly. Illinois College has given you most of what you need or has at least put you on the right road academically, creatively, perhaps even socially. The final thing I would wish you.. and the thing you must pretty much create on your own… is Fire in Your Belly. Be a father with a passion for loving your children.. be a teacher with a passion for making the world better by inspiring those who will live in it .. be an administrator with a passion for bringing out the grandest in people. Have Fire in your Belly. Fire.. like… The grandmother of Megan Badasch, class of 99.. Who started a library in West Union, Illinois, and now teaches senior citizens to read those books. Fire like Dr. and Mrs. Jim Reid, the parents of Christine, who teach classes to young engaged couples on how to firmly fix their marriage on a Christian relationship. Fire.. Fire like Pat Ward.. father of Rebecca.. who’s mounted a one-man campaign to make nature accessible to the entire world. Fire like Linda VanAken, mother of Kristin, who in spite of small funding and frequent administrative apathy, continues to excite the children of Jacksonville to the joys of theatre. Fire like Alberta Hill, grandmother of Holly, who told me last week.. “I lived 79 years without even thinking about cancer. Now they tell meI have it. And I still choose not to think about it. I have too much to do.” I’ve spent my years working with people in all walks of life. Without exception, the happiest are not those with the best income, the most degrees, or even the best health… They are instead, those who have an enthusiasm for life.. a combustible fanaticism for their work and their family, their life and their Lord. They are those who have Fire in their belly. Put some mud on your feet, throw your head back, never stop to consider the consequences if you know you’re doing what’s right, and put some Fire in Your Belly! And before I close, I’d like to publicly apologize to Sigma Pi today, 29 years later for that bogus telegram. I’m truly sorry for the deception… but when you have fire in your belly, you’re darned hard to beat. Thank you.
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