"Pontifications" by two of our fine classmates!   Following reunion June 10-15, 2014

After hearing the final lines of a poem by Louise Ober read at the dedication of her memorial award, many of you asked for the full piece. Actually the poem was one of a pair that appeared in The Red Balloon. .. "Two Pontifications in the Style of Pope" (Alexander Pope and not the Pope) the other written by our classmate Phil Walters, who became much honored for his sophisticated wit as a journalist and, like Louise, left us too soon.   It is easy to imagine the fun that Phil and Louise had as they strained for maximum pomposity! You will know what they are addressing. Phil rails against it. Louise hails it, then works her knife-like twist at the end.          May Wit and Good Spirits prevail as you Read!   (S. Doughty)

TWO PONTIFICATIONS, IN THE STYLE OF POPE

                                                                                                                     P.T. Walters

Above all Laws, which kindly Nature set

For us to cherish, never to forget,

Is this, which man has always known:

From Love and Brotherhood our worth has grown.

Yet now the Angivenal power roars,

"Thus break your Bonds;  bar well Fraternal Doors,"

Cast out from Nature, and now nature face,

As Palinurus with no resting place.

Now triumphs bright, this earthly Angevine.

A Mortal Rule o'erpowers that Divine.

                                                                                                                  Louise Ober

Awake Greek houseboy!  Leave all other pleas

To white-haired deans,  if not,  to Purple Keys.

This is the time of telegrams, of sneers,

And maybe even (who knows?) goat room tears.

Arise now, and come forth, not to malign,

But vindicate the ways of Angevine.

Self-styled Fratrat!     You member of a clan, 

The House, that Brotherhood of Everyman,

Being chained to beings, link to links,

But all outside your doorstep you call finks.

Ask,  "Are you washed in the blood of Phi Gam?"

"Yes," ('tis replied) "Yes  Yes, Yes  Yes,  I am!"

Cease then, your blith'ring, cease, and join again

The parts, to make a sum:  Great Williams' chain.

Implement.  More good than bad you'll see, 

When lettermen will men of letters be;

And all grads - young execs, old moribunds -

Will offer up their praises and their funds.

MEMORIAL POEM, JUNE 14, 2014

Written and spoken by Davis Taylor on the occasion of the Class of 1964 memorial service for 36 of our classmates who have died since 1960.

You whom I love,

I thought at first you were gone since you're no longer here in body,

but it's more true that you have slipped into a neighboring room of boundless silence

to which love has called me and where I've paused

that we,

like overlapping waves, might once again converse,

and you've surprised me,

when remembered always there and closer with each passing year

because my heart has healed,

the pain with tears washed away,

and now, your spoken names call us

who've gathered here

to be transported to that silent room where we shall find you

more dear    than ever   before.

From the Gates of Prayer... Central Confence of American  Rabbis (1975)

The Blessing of Memory

It is hard to sing of oneness when our world is not complete, when those who once brought wholeness to our life have gone, and naught but memory can fill the emptiness their passing leaves behind.

But memory can tell us only what we were, in company with those we loved; it cannot help us find what each of us, alone, must now become. Yet no one is really alone; those who live no more, echo still within our thoughts and words, and what they did is part of what we have become.

We do best homage to our dead when we live our lives most fully, even in the shadow of our loss. For each of our lives is worth the life of the whole world; in each one is the breath of the Ultimate One. In affirming the One, we affirm the worth of each one whose life, now ended, brought us closer to the Source of life, in whose unity no one is alone and every life finds purpose.