For I love Jack Hiatt very deeply - as you do. I esteem him immeasurably - as you do. I value his friendship incalculably - as you do. My presence on the dais this evening is indeed an inadequate labor of love, for I have no words powerful enough, in this brief moment, to gather the graces and the strengths that accurately portray Jack Hiatt, or that even begin to describe all that he has done for the citizens of the Worcester community. Civilization is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the things of the mind.
Civilization is a matter of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, and delicate feeling.
When imponderables are the things of first importance, there is the height of civilization - and if, at the same time, the power to act exists unimpaired, then human life has reached a level seldom attained and rarely surpassed. Few individuals, Miss Hamilton rightly claims, are capable of the achievement, and periods of history which have produced such men and women in sufficient number to stamp their age are rare indeed. A proud Pericles, however, held the Athens of his day to be one such period of history, and the most famous of his sayings describes briefly but perfectly the height of civilization. Jack's repeated and generous benefactions on behalf of the Worcester Art Museum, as well as other cultural institutions and events in Worcester, clearly bespeak his love of beauty. But like the ancient Athenians, Jack Hiatt, while a lover of beauty, is also a lover of fact who holds fast to reality.