It’s amazing how the memory works. While putting together a post last week about my brother Dave’s high school valedictorian address, a vague memory surfaced that our dad was valedictorian of his college class.

On a lark, I looked up the contact information for the alumni-relations department at Providence College. After pausing to appreciate their punny slogan, Ease on Down the Rhode, I sent an email asking if they might have information regarding Graduation 1951.

My somewhat hazy recollection is that Dad wasn’t #1 in his class. I think he was #3 (I’ve since found a paper stating he was #2). Reverend Father asked him to make the speech. Apparently the other top students weren’t comfortable writing and delivering a speech before a large audience.

Gail at Providence College was on it.

A few days later, she emailed me back that their archives staff found a program from the 1951 Graduation. Also, a newspaper article that named Dad as a speaker.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have a copy of his remarks. But it was great to see other mementoes from 70 years ago.

Since that email just happened to arrive on Dad’s birthday, May 28, I forwarded the documents from Providence College to my three brothers.

The very next day, Dave emailed us with the news that he was sorting through some items in our parents’ attic and this was on top of some files:

That’s right! Ten pages of notes from Dad’s speech.

In the sadness of getting our parents’ house ready to sell, this unexpected gift truly lifted our spirits.

Going through the notes (and admittedly taking a few guesses when trying to decipher Dad’s handwriting), here is what I believe was his final version:

Class Oration

(Stand, remove hat, bow to crucifix, then to Father Slavin, and give greeting.)

Very Reverend Father President, Reverend Fathers, members of the faculty, distinguished guests, representatives of the alumni, relatives and friends of the graduates, and fellow members of the Class of 1951.

(Replace hat.)

This evening we are gathered together to participate in exercises immediately preceding the culmination of our College lives: Commencement. We are finally at the point of attaining the goal for which we had striven so earnestly during our term of undergraduate study. Tomorrow we shall receive the diploma which marks us among those who have successfully completed the requirements for the Baccalaureate degree.

This diploma, this small piece of parchment, is but a symbol.

It is not a passport to Graduate School, nor is it a magic formula entitling us to executive positions in the business world. Of that fact we have no misgivings.

It is, rather, a testimonial of our having received an education befitting a cultured Catholic gentleman; and a token of faith on the part of our professors: faith that we have the ability and the desire to live in accordance with the Will of the Almighty Father Who created us, and to become honorable members of the society in which we live. Whether or not we prove ourselves worthy of their trust is a matter which rests entirely with us.

The obligations which the Dominican Fathers assumed when they undertook to fashion order out of the emotional and mental chaos within us have been discharged. We now possess beginnings of the knowledge necessary to realization of the ultimate human perfection: the enjoyment of everlasting happiness.

And each of us must decide what he will do with it.

Some have taken the heritage of divine truth and debased it to satisfy their own pride, avarice, or lust for power. Others have opened their hearts to the heavenly flood of supernatural grace, adding new luster to the already dazzling brilliance of Christian virtue.

Our Alma Mater is a mere infant, as American colleges go. Only last January it celebrated its thirty-fourth birthday. Yet the history of the education we have received here is not the history of Providence College; it is the history of a system of education which has, for over seven centuries, grown and flourished among the greatest of the European Universities. This system is the Dominican Philosophy of education, and has produced some of the most profound and brilliant intellects the world has ever known.

In the four years that have passed since our entrance into Providence College in the early autumn of 1947, a great and profound change has been worked in us. Physically, we have left behind us the difficult stage of adolescence, and have come into manhood.

Our self-assurance and more mature bearing are proof enough of that.

But these differences are only the external manifestations of a much more basic change; one which has transcended the physical and effected the spiritual man. It has come about through the cultivation of our highest faculty, the intellect.

When we placed ourselves in the hands of the Dominican Fathers, we abandoned, at least virtually, the paths into which most of our primary and secondary education had led us. No longer were we to be spoon-fed the opinionated facts and quasi-factual opinions of a materialistic system of education which has all but atrophied the minds of two generations of this nation’s youth. No longer were we to be satisfied with the superficial argumentations of glib-tongued pedagogues and pseudo-intellectuals. Instead, we set out under the watchful guidance of our professors, to learn the process by which we might come to the knowledge of that ever-present but elusive being: Truth.

To this end we fortified ourselves with the tempered armor of logic and rallied forth into the realms of Thomistic Philosophy. At first we were hopelessly confused, and many of our fondest illusions came tumbling down about us. Soon, however, the incomprehensible definition and syllogism became clearer.

We were advancing.

Slowly, to be sure, but our minds were sharpening. The painted page ceased to spend its dictational power over us. Ideas of others became tools to use, not demigods to be worshipped.

Then suddenly dawned on us that what we were learning was more than Scholastic terms. We were learning a plan of life in complete and perfect harmony with the principles of Christianity. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added to you.” It was for this that we sought a Catholic education. It was for this that we turned to the Dominican Fathers.

To you, Reverend Fathers, who, by your inspiring examples of piety and wisdom, have so bountifully filled our minds and our hearts with the knowledge and the love of God and His creatures; we can but bow our heads and offer a silent prayer of thanksgiving for the privilege of having known and loved you. You have unselfishly dedicated your lives to the often thankless and unrewarding task of laboring in the vineyards of the Lord. It is our fervent hope that, on the day of the great eternal birth, we may greet you once more to thank you for showing us the way to Everlasting Peace.

Tomorrow, we, as undergraduates, shall formally take leave of Providence College. But Providence College will never leave us.

I thank you.

(Finis)

Providence College was an all-men’s school until going co-ed in 1971. To Dad’s great delight, my cousin Claire (one of Mom’s brother Ray‘s daughters) is also an alum. (Claire graduated in 1997.) Ray’s granddaughter Ealish went there, too.

And what was their collective nickname? Well, at my alma mater it’s the Hoosiers … Gary’s, the Fightin’ Engineers.

Dad, Claire, and Ealish? They’re Friars.

This evening, June 4, 2021, marks the 70th anniversary of Dad’s Class Oration.

Dad used his education from that moment on. For the rest of his life, he followed the example set forth to him by the Dominican Fathers. (He very much appreciated the teachings of the Jesuits, too.) It brings me peace that as he slipped away in April, prayer filled the room as his loved ones gently said goodbye.

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