CONWAY, Ark. (May 15, 2015) – Skip Rutherford, Dean of the
University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, received an honorary doctorate of humane
letters at the 131st Hendrix
College Commencement.
This is the full text of “Garden
Hoses, Backpacks, and Defining Moments,” his
acceptance remarks and message to the Class of 2015:
Having long admired the achievements and great expectations
which are synonymous with Hendrix College, I am humbled to receive this
Honorary Degree and to be part of the 2015 commencement. Thank you Mr.
President, Chairman Knight and members of the Board of Trustees for these high
honors.
A special congratulations to President’s Medal recipient
Ples Spradley, who in the not too distant future, we will be calling Dr.
Spradley. Laura and Mark, you have to be proud. I also want to say hello to my
friends Melissa and Rex Nelson. The Nelsons, like many here this morning, are
also proud parents of a Hendrix graduate.
My brother-in-law, John Churchill, spent 24 special years
here on the faculty and as Dean. As a result, I have had both the pleasure and
privilege of being on the campus on numerous occasions – but none, I might add,
more personally memorable than today.
My ties to Hendrix actually go back to elementary school
days.
In my hometown of Batesville, a remarkable woman, Jenny
McCurn, worked 12 to 14 hours every day in a variety of jobs to help support
her three children.
Often after working these long hours, she would stop by our
house and use our garden hose to put water in old metal milk cans placed in the
back seat of her beat-up old car. Some days I would be there and help her.
Jenny lived in a part of town appropriately named "Dry
Run" because it had no water or sewer. The water she hauled in those heavy
milk cans was used by her family to drink, to cook with, and to bathe.
One day, after she had filled up the cans with our hose, I
went inside and sat on the couch beside my Dad, who was reading the newspaper.
After getting his attention, I asked him, "Why do we
have water and Jenny doesn't?"
He put down the paper, looked back at me, and said
something like, "You know it costs a lot of money these days to install
water and sewer lines."
To which I responded, "Are they running water and
sewer lines to all those houses that are being built in the new addition out
there by the college?"
And he said, "I'm sure they are."
"That's not fair," I replied. "Jenny should
get water before they do."
Knowing that he was not going to be able to provide me an
adequate response, he said, "You need to go talk to the Mayor about
that."
I was only in the second or third grade but, in a small
town, that wasn't hard because you would often see the Mayor walking up and
down the street. So I did.
And when I raised the question to the Mayor, which was
probably something like, "Why doesn't Jenny have water," he told me
to write our Congressman.
And that's where Hendrix comes in. The Congressman was
Wilbur Mills
I'm confident my letter never reached him because I had no
idea how to address a letter to a congressman. And I'm sure even if his office
did receive it, they must have thought it was a prank if it said something like
"Jenny should have water."
It's not in the collection at the Mills Center, but I will
tell you that every time I walk through that building, which I did again only a
few weeks ago at President Tsutsui's inauguration, I'm reminded of it.
Jenny died many years ago, but she did live long enough to
see water and sewer come to Dry Run. For the final few years of her life, she
was able to turn the faucet on, take a bath and flush a commode.
I had nothing to do with water and sewer coming to Dry Run.
However, Jenny's story has both haunted me and inspired me
for a lifetime. It has certainly influenced my interest in public service.
As you graduate from Hendrix today, I'm confident Hendrix
has shaped your commitment to public service. I don't know whether you've
experienced a "Jenny moment" here, but I know one of you has been
accepted to Cooper Medical School in New Jersey, where the focus is on the
underserved inner city, and I know large numbers of you will have career
successes both doing good and doing well.
On December 26, 2004, Rina Meutia and her family in Banda
Aceh, Indonesia, were awakened by a noise that sounded like a train. They ran
outside and, when they turned around, they saw a wall of water coming right at
them.
Everyone started running. Family members were separated.
Rina ran to the top floor of the neighborhood mosque and stood terrified as the
water rose to her shoulders before stopping.
And then the water receded almost as quickly as it came.
Forty-five minutes later, Rina was able to leave the mosque, still having no
idea what had happened. Until that day, she did not know what a Tsunami was.
When she walked outside, she saw bodies everywhere. In 45
minutes, over 160,000 people died in and around her home city. But thankfully
everyone in her family survived.
Rina later came to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar
and graduated from our program at the Clinton School. She then began work with
the World Bank in disaster relief and is now working at the United Nations.
Like Rina, you will be defined by your experiences, but you
will also be defined by your ability to
make the best of them.
As you embark on new journeys and adventures, don't be
paralyzed by the fear of failure because even the best fall down sometime.
On one of my Hendrix visits many years ago, I saw a quote
written on a small index card taped on the door of a professor's office.
It read, "The choice you never can make is the choice
you never heard of."
To me that represents what Hendrix and liberal arts
education are all about: choices.
When 12 percent of Americans think Joan of Arc was Noah's
wife, the value of a liberal arts education takes on added meaning.
Former Secretary of Education John Gardner was quoted as
saying, "You can't build education like Pharoah did the pyramids. It has
to be created and re-created for each generation."
In the late 1800's, on the 57th ballot, The Board of
Trustees, chose Conway as the new location for this campus, but did so only
after members of the host committee had assured the trustees that the five
saloons in Conway were closed and that some streets would actually be paved.
Now some 125 years later, with a talented and dedicated
faculty, a hard-working and supportive staff, a new strategic plan, a new
branding effort, an innovative Village at Hendrix, a continuing inflow of
bright freshmen and a continuing outflow of prepared graduates, the cultural
richness of the Rwanda Scholars and other international students, The Arkansas
Advantage, partnerships with KIPP and LULAC, a revival of college football and
the school spirit associated with it, a strong Board of Trustees, and led by a
dynamic and visionary President, you are part of re-creating education for a new generation.
After all, it was President Frank Underwood from House of Cards who said, "I don't
want a version. I want a vision."
Somehow, I think President Underwood could relate quite
well to a visionary college president who also happens to be the world's
authority on Godzilla and who is known for "Tsutselfies."
Last Saturday, I handed a Clinton School Master of Public
Service diploma to Brandon Mathews from Fort Smith. For his final school
project, in partnership with the Arkansas Food Bank, Brandon developed a startup
guide for food pantries on college campuses.
You may be surprised to know that, percentage-wise,
Arkansas leads the nation in food insecurity, and that college students and
college staff are no exceptions.
Thirty-five percent of the students at the University of
Arkansas in Fayetteville are food insecure. At the University of Arkansas at
Pine Bluff, that number is a staggering 77 percent.
There are only four food pantries on the 54 Arkansas
college and university campuses. When I told Brandon I was speaking here today,
he said that Hendrix is one of the campuses considering a food pantry and
encouraged me to raise the issue.
I'm proud to do so because, when Brandon was an
undergraduate, he himself accessed a campus food pantry as do many students,
staff members and their families.
A week ago at our graduation, Brandon received the Clinton
School's highest award.
So from this day forward, when you see students changing
classes on a campus with a food pantry, you can expect that for many of them,
green beans, and textbooks are sharing space in the same backpack.
Like garden hoses, I will never again think of student backpacks
in the same way.
In the series finale of Parks
and Recreation, Amy Poehler said, "When we worked here together, we
fought, scratched and clawed to make people's lives a tiny bit better."
And she went on to say, "What makes work worth doing
is getting to do it with people that you love."
The class of 2015 will grow old together at reunions.
You will bring your spouses, your partners, your
significant others, your children and your grandchildren here to the campus.
You will show them where you lived, where you studied, where you worked, where
you played. You will drop by to visit your favorite professors and staff
members.
You will pass on the stories, traditions and myths that
have been passed to you, as well as new ones you have helped create.
You will check on the disco trays in the cafeteria, the
shirttail serenades and if birthdays are still celebrated in the fountain.
You will say you were on campus when the butterfly garden
was created and that you were the first class to understand what it means to be
“Hendrix-y."
You might even open the top drawer of Wilbur Mills desk to
see if students are continuing the practice started at least 20 years ago of
writing Mr. Mills personal notes.
And as far as new traditions go, here's one for current and
future students to consider: When you visit the President's home, hide a
Godzilla toy on a book shelf or somewhere. And then see how long it takes for
Dr. Swann to find it.
In all seriousness, stories and traditions do matter. In
the years ahead, you will return to Hendrix and to Conway and share them at
campus and sporting events, graduations, weddings and funerals.
You will laugh and you will cry.
But most of all, as Amy Poehler said, you will love. And
like generations before you, you will love Hendrix for a lifetime.
And beginning today, I hope, as alumni, you will always
come back – and always give back – to this very special place.
Congratulations and thank you.
About Hendrix
Founded in 1876, Hendrix
College is a national leader in engaged liberal arts and sciences education.
This year, Hendrix was named the country’s #1 “Up and Coming” liberal arts college
and #8 in the nation for “Best Undergraduate Teaching” by U.S. News and World Report.
Hendrix is featured in the 2015 Fiske Guide to Colleges, Forbes magazine's list of
America's Top Colleges, the 2014 Princeton
Review’s The Best 378 Colleges, and
the latest edition of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change
the Way You Think about Colleges.
Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For
more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.