Dad's High School Salutatory Address

As salutatorian of his graduating class, Larry stood before his classmates on graduation night (May 19, 1948) and gave his salutatory address. It is reprinted below, having been carefully transcribed from his typewritten speech notes. I have refrained from correcting the few typographical errors and misspellings for the sake of an accurate transcription.

FOLLOW THE GLEAM

On behalf of the graduating class, I take pleasure in welcoming our parents, relatives and friends of our school to the commencement exercises. We have been looking forward to this day for twelve years so you may realize why we look so happy at the thought that at last we have reached our first goal and will soon be considered high school graduates.

We are grateful to all those who in any way assisted us on the long journey from the first to the twelfth year. Many of those who started the educational journey with us were forced through no fault of their own, to leave school before reaching their objective and we mourn their absence today. No matter from what educational institutions we may graduate in the future, it will lack the freshness and buoyancy that can only be felt in early youth.

On the northern border line of this country is located Lake Superior, the largest fresh water lake in the world. Its outlet is the St. Mary’s River which is very crooked and dangerous and in early times many wrecked vessels could be seen along its shores. To avoid these mis-fortunes the government established a system of “range lights” so that the mariner can keep his vessel exactly in the channel, by having two lights in line and others, and thus the river is just as safe by night as by day. The only instructions it is necessary for the captain to give to the pilot is, “Follow the Gleam.”

The same is true in every human life. We have the gleam of the “range lights” of others lives to guide us as we struggle through the mists and uncertainties on the great highway of life. Were it not for these, we might find ourselves like the early mariners on the crooked river, lost in the darkness of the night and be wrecked on a rock or sand bar we could not see.

The road of life has been explored and the dangerous places have been marked thousands of times by those who have gone before us, some of them going safely through and others going to wreck and ruin. The one should be a guide to us as well as the other and we should carefully study the various signposts they have left behind.

If we went into the street and asked the first dozen men you met, “What is success in life?” It is safe to say that ten would answer, “The accumulation of wealth.” In spite of this almost unanimous verdict; we have the testimony of millionaires, and of those who are rich only in mental culture and noble characters, that this is not true. When Jay Gould had accumulated about a hundred million dollars and was about to take his last journey, he said that the possession of wealth brought no feeling of pleasure, but the process of accumulating it was the most fascinating game in life, and he died a disappointed and miserable man. Success is making the most of ones opportunity.

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches” for without it, gold has no value, birth no distinction, station no dignity, beauty no charm and age no reverence.

A good character is a precious thing, above rubies, gold, crowns, or kingdoms and the work of making it is the noblest labor on earth. Money-getting is unhealthy when it impoverishes the mind, or dries up the sources of the spiritual life; when it extinguishes the sense of beauty, and makes one indifferent to the wonders of nature and art; when it blunts the moral sense and confuses the distinction between right and wrong, virtue and vice. Character is perpetual wealth, and beside him who possesses it the millionaire who has it not seems but a pauper. Plain living, rich thought and grand effort are real riches.

The power of great thoughts and grand sentiments to refine the face and manner, and lift man above his surroundings, is marvelous. We see this illustrated in the faces of great scientists, reformers and statesmen. The body is but a servant of the mind. A well balanced, cultured, and well disciplined intellect reacts very powerfully upon the physique, and tends to bring it into harmony with itself. On the other hand, a weak, vacillating, onesided, unsteady and ignorant mind will ultimately bring the body into sympathy with it. Every pure and uplifting thought, every noble aspiration for the good and the true, every longing of the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty purpose and unselfish evdeavor, reacts upon the body makes it stronger, more harmonious, and more beautiful.

This is an age of specialists when a man centers his life effort on a single thing and makes a success of it. Nature gives to each some talent that dominates all the others and points the way towanrd a natural goal. He has but to “Follow the Gleam” and his life will usually be a success. A one-talent man who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more than a ten-talent man who scatters his energies and never knows exactly what he will do. The successfur man is the one who never steps outside of his specialty or dissipates his individuality. It was an Edison, a Bell, a Howe, a Stephenson, a Watt who were the greatest inventors of all the ages.

Adam Smith spent ten years writing the “Wealty of Nations”; Gibbson spent twenty years writing the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Noah Webster gave thirty-six of the best years of his life to his dictionary and it took Bancroft six years to write his “History of the United States.” Field crossed the ocean fifty times to lay the first cable, and Newton wrote his “Chronology of Ancient Nations”, sixteen times.

Victories that are easy are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the resuly of hard fighting. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes, but great minds rise above them. We cannot find a better illustration of this than that of Abraham Lincoln. Born in a hovel, reared in squalor, with no gleam of light or fair surroundings; singularly awkward and ungainly even among the uncouth about him. It was reserved for this remarkable character, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a critical moment and intrusted with the destiny of a nation. The most experienced and accomplished men of the day, men like Sumner, Seward and Chace were sent to the rear while this strange figure was brought to the front, given the reins of power and a reunited country was the resuly. Though he lived in comparative obsecurity he always had his eye on an ideal and when the opportunity came he was ready for it.

It is one of the mysteries of our life that genius is nourished by poverty. Its greatest works have been achieved by sorrowing ones of the world. Not in the brilliant salon, not in ease and competence, is genius usually born and nurtured; but often in adversity and destitution, in bare and fireless garrets, with the noise of squalid children and in the deep gloom of uncheered despair. In scenes like these have men labored, studied and trained themselves, until at last they have emanated from obscurity the shining lights of their times and have become the companions on kings, the guides and teachers of their kind, and exercised an influence upon the thought of the world for generations that come after them.

All of these persons I have mentioned were men of wisdom who could look beyond their immediate surroundings and see the “range lights” as they gleamed forth through the darkest and stormiest nights and by the aid of these lights they have been safely guided to the bright morning and the glorious day when their hopes and dreams have come true and the word “success” has been written on their life's achievements.

I THANK YOU