Rhoers...Feb 95
The Masks we Wear...Faculty invite meeting Me: Service to individual.
A most appropriate topic...I could not have chosen a better metaphor for the Illinois College literary society.
I owe a great deal to Pi Pi Rho...They, along with Dr. Charles Frank, assured me that literary pursuits are something which grown men do.
Young men must try on one mask after another until we find ours..Then work the rest of our life to remove it..... I’ve known a few free spirits...I>C> student...Jeff Westerfield...graduation announcement....robbed and tied up....
lst part of life spent find the mask, the rest of it, losing it.....Some do so before they die...Oliver Wendell Holmes in his THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE said “Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.”
College life...and more particularly, a literary society, provides us a safe place to try on these masks.....Me: undertaker...journalist....PhD in English....Dad: certificate...Gardner Hall..May of 1967, on knees, first heart-felt prayer of my life..God, if you’re real...next day phone rang on 1st floor Gardner....job offer..direct plays? Sure. Didn’t know where to find them....now 23 years later, still haven’t been found out. I tried on many masks until I found the courage to take mine off.
Advantages over a fraternity where the simple burdens of living together negate so much of the advantages of the fraternal experience. I was bamboozled. As a frosh I really thought I was joining a fraternity, thinly veiled as something else.....I found out otherwise...I found the literary society a place to grow...a place to try on my masks in an atmosphere of encouragement...of nurturing....of safety.. Not because we all wise. We were not. You here tonight are not. We were simply in some sort of a magical mix in a magical and idealistic time of our lives. The need for a liberal arts education has grown larger and larger since I graduated. I speak to corporations, colleges, governmental groups...the wide scope...the broad-based tolerance is what is most needed...let IBM be damned... We were at a place much like you are now, where we badly needed a test-plot....a proving ground...for our imaginations......KEATS quote.... We need a place give our imaginations as free a reign as this veil of tears called life will allow.