President’s Greetings, Founder’s Day Lovefeast, 5/30/03

Good morning, and welcome back to your campus.

Just two weeks ago, at Moravian’s 261st Commencement, we sent a bright-eyed class of freshly-minted Moravian graduates into the world. They are an especially fortunate group of young men and women.

Like thousands of other college graduates throughout our nation, they are now armed with a first-class education, with high hopes and dreams, and with the energy and talent to bring those dreams to life.

Moravian grads, however, have something extra, something special in their toolkits for life – a gift that is at once intangible and empowering. And each Moravian grad discovers that something special in a different way.

It happens when an aspiring teacher learns in class that her chosen vocation – and her College – carry forth a 300-year-old legacy of John Amos Comenius, the pioneer of modern education.

It happens when a member of the women’s basketball team walks the halls of Brethren’s House, and finds those remarkable photos of her predecessors who played here 70 or 80 years ago.

And it happens when a student musician steps on this stage and adds her own voice to an extended, exquisite musical chorus that has been sustained by generations of Moravian students in this hall for more than 130 years.

Of course, that something extra – that something special – that our newest Moravian graduates now have is an unbroken connection to a unique past, a legacy that gives them meaning, direction, and inspiration. It is a past that you represent so marvelously.

In an important sense, then, your own classes of the 30’s, 40’s and early 50’s – and the class of 2003 – share and affirm an important and powerful truth: that an institution’s past, and especially Moravian’s past, cannot be simply remembered or acknowledged. It must be lived and renewed in the hearts and minds of our most venerable and our newest alumni.

Thank you so much for coming back – and for a legacy that continues to lead and inspire us.

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