Winter 1997

Continuity and Change

Not long ago, with the collusion and assistance of Pat and Hugh Gunnison, Ann and I had lunch with “Doc” Delmage. For the young among you, Doc is a tired member of the St. Lawrence English department, member of the Class of 1932 and living legend among those who were able to have him as a teacher. Doc doesn’t move as fast as he used to, but his wit is quick as ever and he enjoys a good joke. I know only three, but I told all of them, and he laughed heartily at each one. He knows how to please a president!
We discussed the North Country and St. Lawrence at length, for I had been struggling to find a way to put into words that peculiar combination of North Country and worldly values that came together, I believe, to shape the character of St. Lawrence. In my experience, knowing the genes of a place – how it is wired, if you will – is essential to managing change so that it feels right. All institutions must change with the times, and sometimes even seek to change the times, but institutions that are guided by their most central values are really simultaneously changing and staying the same. Their values are a road map that guides them from one place to another, and by checking in with their values along the way they know if they are on the right path. When even profound change can be seen as continuity with the past, institutions can make their way to very new places with surprising ease.
This issue – how to foster needed change at St. Lawrence in ways consistent with its character – was much on my mind that day we had lunch with Doc. He asked if I had ever read Eben Holden, Irving Bacheller’s 1900 novel set in the North Country. I said that I had not, but that on his recommendation I would. Though I didn’t admit this to Doc at the time, I hadn’t a clue as to who Eben Holden was until Doc made the connection for me with Irving Bacheller. I had thought Eben Holden was the donor of the dining room in Lee Hall and had wondered if he was still alive so that he could possibly make another gift!
The next week I got the book out of the library. In the preface, Bacheller, a graduate of St. Lawrence and a long-time trustee and benefactor, says: “A certain pious farmer in the north country when, like Agricola, he was about to die, requested the doubtful glory of this epitaph: ‘He was a poor sinner, but he done his best.’ Save for the fact that I am an excellent sinner, in a literary sense, the words may stand for all the apology I have to make.
“The characters were mostly men and women I have known and who left me with a love of my kind that even a wide experience with knavery and misfortune has never dissipated.”
Reading those lines, I though I heard Doc himself – a man of the North Country and a man of the world – a metaphor perhaps for St. Lawrence today.
While shaped and nurtured by the North Country, St. Lawrence is yet a place much in and of the wider world – a place that gives its students North Country roots, but that also teaches them about and connects them, via first-hand overseas experience as well as through books and talk, to the big issues in the world today, and to the little people as well as the big people of the world.
The North Country side of our character includes, in my view, a kind of simplicity, directness, lack of pretension, honesty, fairness and willingness to forge ahead and face the unknown squarely. Read the last words of Bacheller’s Eben Holden, graven on his tombstone:

I ain’t afaid.
‘Shamed o’ nuthin I ever done.
Alwuss kep’my tugs tight,
Never swore ‘less ‘twas nec’sary,
Never ketched a fish bigger’n ‘twas
Er lied ‘n a hoss trade
Er shed a tear I did n’t hev to.
Never cheated anybody but
Eben Holden
Goin’ off somewheres, Bill – dunno
the way nuther –
Dunno ‘f it’s east er west er north
er south,
Er road er trail;
But I ain’t afraid.

As with Eben Holden, there is a common sense, humility and straightforwardness about this place, a willingness to strike out boldly into the unknown, without fear. One can feel it on campus, and in the town, and it feels right.
This condition exists in part because there is also here something cosmopolitan, worldly, progressive and reformist, committed to equality, equity and truth-telling – Universalist values joined to the frontier character just described. What this means is that struggles like our quest to be more diverse, inclusive and multicultural are really about a continuity with our past – being true to our nature – rather than about striking off in a new direction.
This is not to imply that St. Lawrence has always met the challenge of its founding values. But these values are so strong and central a guide to our behavior that, should St. Lawrence find itself on a path inconsistent with them, our basic honesty as individuals and as an institution will necessarily force us, in my view, to bring our behavior back in line with them.
The character of this place, forged in the mid-19th century, shaped by place and the values of its founders, remains an implicit road map for change as well as continuity. Our job will be to make the journeys necessary to get to new places, guided by the road map of character built into our institutional genes. If we seek change while remaining true to our character, the journey will be easier. And we will still know who we are when we arrive.