Remarks at the Dedication Ceremony for the Holocaust Memorial Gallery, November 5, 2012:
Thank you so much, John, Anne, Jonathan, Sal, Joe, and Tom,
I doubt, though, that even Evelyne’s and my own mother would believe everything you say about us. I am happy to tell all of you what I have told Tom Moran many times, everyone deserves a friend such as you, Tom. Working together with you, Tom, in the Institute for Ethics in Public Life gave me an opportunity to flourish, as have so many of the seventy Fellows who have joined us there to discuss ways to integrate ethical concerns into our disciplines and into our work with our students. It is indeed an oasis of nourishment and calm for our campus, the envy of college communities across the United States. As indeed is our Honors’ Program, started by Professor David Mowry, through which so many of our finest students have been nourished in their educational experiences.
Everyone deserves an opportunity to flourish as Evelyne and I have flourished here at our beloved SUNY Plattsburgh. Together, Evelyne and I can only say “Thank you to you all!”—and also to so many others who can’t be here today—for all that you have let us become—in the true st sense of the motto of the State University of New York: Let each become all that he or she is capable of becoming.
Thank you especially, Anne Hansen and Faith Long and all of your wonderful team in Institutional Advancement for the energy and commitment you have given to this undertaking.
Thank you, especially, Joe DeSalvo, Norman Radow, and Doug Sloan—my beloved former students—for your devotion and your generosity. You each have fulfilled my fondest hopes for you when I first met you long ago as your professor. Your love for your families, your contributions to your communities, and your engagement in your chosen professions—are indeed inspiring. You all have surpassed your old professor. And in doing so, you fulfill what every parent and teacher wants for his or her children or students. Every teacher deserves to have had such thoughtful, challenging and stimulating students such as you. To you, and to all my former students, many of you who are here today, I can only say that you have helped me, have taught me, as much or more than I have helped or taught you. Teaching is not a solo act: it takes an open-minded, engaged and responsible student as well as a dedicated teacher to make something happen in the classroom, to say nothing of whatever happens afterwards, even long afterwards. That I have had some success in this way is a credit to all my students far more than to me.
Our beloved son, Andrew, and his family, who live in Baltimore, could not be here today. We would so have liked them to be here with us. But our dear daughter, Dale Fergen Walsh—a former SUNY Plattsburgh student who sought us out at a time of need when she had no family close by and now calls us Mom and Dad—and her husband Jim and their two marvelous sons, Jackson and Joseph, are our St. Albans family and we are so glad that they are here. Also here are Doug and Jennifer Sloan’s two extraordinary and energizing sons, Zachary and Justin, who have a lasting place in our hearts, too. Altogether, Evelyne and I have nine grandsons: some are ours by birth and call us Oma and Opa; some have adopted us and call us Oma and Opa, too. All of them are splendid, bright, a joy to all who know them.
We are honored today, too, to have with us Professor and Frau Manfred and Gerda Heinemann, from Hannover Germany, whom Evelyne and I have known since my doctoral research in Germany in 1970. Manfred, a retired professor of the history of sciences and of education, has been my mentor and my guide through research in the history of German elementary school system. Gerda, a retired school principal in Hannover, has taken her students to the sites of concentration camps in Germany and Poland, helping a young generation of Germans confront their ancestors’ past and reminding them of their responsibilities to the present. Manfred and Gerda’s son, Christopher, lived with us one year as an exchange student at Peru High School. He and his sister, Dani, are as dear to us as are our own children and grandchildren.
Evelyne and I want to thank all of you who have been our caring and thoughtful colleagues over all the years. Tom Moran has warned me not to try and mention you all by name—we would be here far too long and there is the danger that I would leave someone out.
Evelyne and I came to Plattsburgh somewhat by accident. There were four positions in the United States for which I was qualified when I was ready to leave Brown University, even though I had not yet completed my doctoral degree: Princeton, Vanderbilt, Holy Cross and SUNY Plattsburgh. I was an also-ran at the first three. I landed the job here. We moved here not even really knowing where Plattsburgh was. I asked the desk-clerk in the hotel in New York City, where I was interviewed by Allen Everest and Gene Link for this position, if he knew where Plattsburgh was and all he could say was “somewhere way up north!”
Our History Department, I am confident in saying, is a model for our entire college in its excellent teaching and scholarship. If I have flourished as a teacher, it is within the context of a Department of colleagues who all are superb teachers and, to a greater degree than I ever was, also superb scholars. Here we have been forty years now, our beloved College, our beloved home. Forty of the fifty years that we will be married come January, Lord willing. As some of you may know, the first fifty years are the hardest.
We are here to dedicate a portion of our beautiful library—the true treasure, the heart and soul of our College—to the memory of those who were victims of the Holocaust perpetrated on millions of innocents, men, women and children gathered by the unspeakable brutality of the Nazis and their accomplices, and also the memory of the innocents who were annihilated in other hate-filled genocides as well. Alas, our species surpasses all others in its willingness to do itself harm.
Thanks to Dr. Steven Steinlight, a former colleague in the English Department and now a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) in Washington, DC, we have two of the spoons brought to Auschwitz by the Nazis’ victims, here enshrined in a steel cabinet crafted by former faculty Art Department member Don Osborne. On the wall hang some of the hundreds of stunning and haunting wood carvings by Dr. Herbert Savel, commemorating innocent children who were tortured by the Nazis as they and their families were enmeshed in the web of genocide. It is a solemn place on our campus. Dr. Cerise Oberman, retired Feinberg library director, and Ed Brohel, retired director of our marvelous museum without walls, deserve our thanks for their guidance and wisdom in helping our College have such an excellent way to enable us to appreciate the wisdom and the beauty of the world’s literature, learning and art. Holly Heller Ross and Cecilia Esposito continue respectively Cerise Obermann’s and Ed Brohel’s excellent work. Our students, our community’s rabbi from Temple Beth Israel, and I have helped commemorate victims of the Holocaust and genocides in a ceremony here every year. I am so proud and grateful to know that Professor Jonathan Slater of our Communications Department and students from our College’s Hillel Society will continue these commemorations.
Every college, every university should have such a space. If some do not, perhaps they will be inspired by ours to do so. I would like to hope that bringing attention to the Holocaust and other genocides as we are doing here at SUNY Plattsburgh will somehow and in some way make such events less likely. If thoughtful, challenging education cannot do it, I don’t know what can. History is a mirror of what we can be, the best and the worst of our natures. I always tried as a teacher of history to tell my students that, despite the bloody record we find on each page of the past, there is reason to hope. What happened need not have happened. There were often courageous individuals who made a difference. Good men and women can and do make a difference in displaying their humility and their compassion, their wisdom and willingness to stand up for what is right.
These are the keys: humility and compassion. Finding ways to help each other to recognize our individual frailties and to appreciate how much we need to hold and love each other—a dream we must somehow make real. This is our responsibility to ourselves, our families, to our children, to our fellow men and women, in each and every generation until we finally learn that the loss of any one of us diminishes us all.
Evelyne and I are overwhelmed by this honor. We can only say “thank you.” But we say it with heartfelt sincerity and abiding affection for you all. Every day is a gift for all of us. Today you have given us a great gift, a gift of love, one that we fervently hope will continue to resonate with all who come here to see these two spoons as a reminder of what must never happen again; to see these glowing glass sculptures by Jean-Jacques Duval, which shine like jewels, as reminders of the spiritual essence of countless victims; to see these haunting wooden carvings by Dr. Savel, as reminders of the innocents who have been lost. Evelyne and thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts.
