Remarks by Elvis J. StahrPresident, Indiana University

Indiana Sesquicentennial Commission Dinner

Solarium, Indiana Memorial Union

July 30, 1966 - 5:30 p.m.

Thank you Mr. Hunsberger. Governor and Mrs. Rock, Chairman Carmony and members

of the Sesquicentennial Commission, members of the Advisory Committee, Queen

Sylvia, Mrs. McKinzie, Senator O'Bannon, Mr. Zenor, and you very select group

of ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

Ever since a memorable weekend in mid-April we have watched cities and

villages all over Indiana celebrate this anniversary year, while we awaited

our turn to welcome you. We are delighted to have you on the campus of what

our Hoosier forefathers wished to be known by the name and style of "the

Indiana University." I hope you historians, history buffs, music lovers,

and just plain proud Hoosiers will excuse the immodesty of an adopted son

when I say that the Indiana University seems a fitting place to unveil one

of the principal cultural events of this Sesquicentennial Year.

Usually a fete such as this is preceded by months of conspicuous beard-

growing. If this activity is truly a sign of an impending commemoration, not

only Mr. Eikum but a small contingent of our campus community must have been

readying itself for this occasion over a period of some years, backwoods

costumes and all. Their reverence for history is a touching thing.

I want to take a moment to pay tribute to the members of the Indiana

Sesquicentennial Commission and of the Advisory Committee. Quite seriously, they

have succeeded admirably in awakening citizens to a sense of their heritage

and to a heightened state consciousness, if indeed such a thing is possible

in Indiana. The rest of us owe them a vote of warmest thanks for the time

and talent they have devoted to the promotion of commemorative activities

throughout the state. I doubt that many of us realize the extent of the

preparations which had to be made in order that all Hoosierdom would have a

part and that these many parts would be coordinated. I hope that when this

year-long celebration is surveyed in perspective, the full story of the

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behind-the-scenes work will get a generous measure of attention.

One facet of the activities I am particularly familiar with--Indiana

University's participation, and I'd like to describe it in some detail to

illustrate through this instance the extensive effort that is being made all

over the state to observe Indiana's one-hundred fiftieth birthday in a worthy

manner.

This evening's opera, of course, is itself a notable example of the

University's participation. The Indiana Historical Society originally

suggested the opera, as you know, in response to a subsidy provided by Miss

Elsie Sweeney of Columbus, and Professor Walter Kaufmann of our School of

Music was commissioned to compose it. Following the world premiere we shall

witness tonight, the opera will have one other performance here in the

Auditorium and one at Clowes Hall in Indianapolis.

This summer the University Theatre is presenting four plays by Indiana

dramatists--at the Brown County Playhouse "Clarence" and "Intimate Strangers"

by Booth Tarkington and Paul Osborn's "On Borrowed Time" and "Morning's at

Seven." The Theatre is saluting the Sesquicentennial also in the repertory

of the Showboat Majestic, moored at Jeffersonville. The Showboat has now

completed its run of "On Borrowed Time" and tomorrow night will present the

last performance of Kenyon Nicholson's "The Barker" with "Morning's at Seven"

to follow. You really should include the Playhouse and the Showboat in your

summer plans if you haven't yet done sot-this summer and every summer.

Indiana's birthday has inspired I.U. folk to three other creative

endeavors, two pageants and a dance program. Professor and Mrs. Newell Long

wrote the outdoor musical drama, "Corydon, the Cradle of Our Commonwealth,"

performed at Corydon during late June and early July; and Professor James

Hurt of our Kokomo Regional Campus made Tecumseh's fight against the advance

of white settlement in Indiana the subject of a pageant which was presented

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in Kokomo. Using yet another mode of performing art, the Department of

Physical Education for Women has this year offered a panorama of Indiana

history in Dance Convocations here and at Kokomo.

Complementing these performances are exhibits of Indiana arts and

crafts. Many of you have viewed or will have the opportunity to view some-

where in the State this year the traveling art exhibit usually housed right

here in the Indiana Memorial Union--"150 Years of Indiana Art"--with paintings

by such Indiana notables as T. C. Steele, Wayman Adams, William Forsyth,

Curry Bohm, Glen Henshaw, and William Chase. Pioneer craftsmanship, on

the other hand, is the focus of the Indiana University Museum's exhibit,

"Indiana's Vanishing Industries"--the very first exhibit of our newly opened

Museum, by the way, and one of the earliest projects of our Sesquicentennial

program. The Museum is in Maxwell Hall, just about fifty feet southwest of

this Union Building, and the exhibit will remain on display through September.

Two additional exhibits of great interest and relevance will open during

the Fall semester: one featuring broadsides, newspapers, rare books and

manuscripts at the world-famous Lilly Library and another, related exhibit,

depicting the development of printing in Indiana, to be on display in the

Fine Arts Building. Both buildings flank the great Auditorium where you

will presently find yourselves.

Some pertinent printing now in process or soon to result from the par-

ticipation of the Indiana University Press in the Sesquicentennial may be of

particular interest to an audience like this. Professor William E. Wilson

of the English Department, whose writings about New Harmony and other

southern Indiana locales of his acquaintance are well known (remember "The

Angel and the Serpent"?), has prepared a review and interpretation of the

sweep of Indiana history, scheduled for publication this Fall; and a survey

of Indiana's contemporary status in fields as superficially diverse as

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education and industry will offer the views of numerous contributors to

Indiana: A Self Appraisal which will also come off our Press later in year.

History, the venerable Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote, is a narrative of

designs which have failed, and hopes that have been disappointed. Those of

you who have been privileged to hear Indiana University's Sesquicentennial

Visiting Professor of History, Dr. Thomas D. Clark, describe frontier Indiana

in one of his dozens of lectures throughout the State thus far may suspect

Dr. Johnson of indulging in one of his crotchets; at any rate, our Sesqui-

centennial historian himself--my own teacher at the University of Kentucky

over 30 years ago--has suggested neither failure nor disappointment in his

delightful contributions to the honoring of Indiana's history. He's away

but his beautiful Beth is here.

Indiana University has also included others from off the campus in the

planning of its observance: the high school students who competed in the

Indiana Sesquicentennial Public Speaking Contest, for instance--I believe

the winner of that competition is here tonight--and the prominent speakers

who will join in recognizing the achievements of Indiana business and industry

during the week-long dedication of our new School of Business building this

November.

I must say that I think these highlights of the University's specially

scheduled activities this year simply indicate the richness of the total

storehouse that is ours to explore as Hoosier citizens. But perhaps they

also justify in part the expectations of those who wrote so long ago the

singular documents in which education was expressly urged for the future

citizens of this territory and state. From the oft-quoted statement in the

Northwest Ordinance of 1787 concerning encouragement of schools and the means

of education in the Territory, through various legislative elaborations, to

... .........

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the provision in Indiana's first Constitution for "a general system of

education, ascending in a regular gradation from township schools to a

state university,"--over and over the men who early presided over the destiny

of this area made it unmistakably evident that they considered education

essential to freedom and progress.

I like to reflect on that group of pioneer men, gathered for the first

general assembly of the Territory, composing the act--approved by Governor

William Henry Harrison 160 years ago, "to incorporate a university in the

Indiana Territory" which read in part:

"Wthereas the independence, happiness, and energy of every republic

depends (under the influence of the destinies of Heaven) upon the wisdom,

virtue, talents, and energy of its citizens and rulers;

"And whereas science, literature, and the liberal arts contribute in an

eminent degree to improve those qualities and requirements;

"And whereas learning hath ever been found the ablest advocate of

genuine liberty, the best supporter of rational religion, and the source of

the only solid and imperishable glory which nations can acquire;

"And forasmuch as literature and philosophy furnish the most useful

and pleasing occupations, improving and varying the enjoyments of prosperity,

affording relief under the pressure of misfortune, and hope and consolation

in the hours of death;

"And considering that in a commonwealth where the humblest citizen may

be elected to the highest public offices, and where the Heaven-born preroga-

tive of the right to elect and to reject is retained and secured to the

citizens, the knowledge which is requisite for a magistrate and elector should

be widely diffused;". Noble, yet amazingly realistic words, wouldn't you agree?

There are marvelous paradoxes in, say, the exalted words of this act

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and the recorded comment of one of Monroe County's fairer residents about

the piano imported by the first teacher in the Indiana Seminary: "it was

as fur afore a fiddle as a fiddle is afore a jusarp," And we can wonder a

bit now that Latin and Greek were the subjects taught to the ten or so

shoeless boys who came for instruction at the newly opened Seminary.

The history of the development of the Seminary into Indiana College in

1828 and Indiana University ten years later is only in degree less eventful

than the records that are being written contemporarily from year to year as

we endeavor to fulfill the commission the University was assigned so long

ago. I'm proud to announce that Dr. Thomas Clark, our Sesquicentennial

Scholar, has agreed to write that history as part of the observance of the

University's own Sesquicentennial in 1970. I don't know whether other insti-

tutions in Indiana can match our own first president's enforcement of his

authority by pushing a professor off the log that spanned Spanker's Branch,

now more familiarly known as Jordan River, or the prank which delighted stu-

dents at their mandatory early morning prayers when another early president

was greeted with a squawking rooster when he opened his desk to take out his

Bible. I do know that the story of higher education in Indiana is one of

which this state can be proud as it honors the great individuals and forces

which have brought it to its present stature among the states of this nation.

You can judge better, however, what it has meant to Indiana to provide

the opportunity of higher education to her young people if you observe, rather

than hear about it from me. And so, I thank you for indulging me in this

mention of my favorite subject and I invite you now to the performance of

"A Hoosier Tale," in which, by the way, many of those young people will

participate.