The citizen. [volume] (Berea, Ky.) 1899-1958, 1920-10-28
Inaugural Address
of President Hutchins
Delivered in Berea College Chapel
October u, 1920


Of Berea, Comrades Of the Faculty
Fellow-workers Of the College, Stu.
dents Of the great school which
shelters us all:
May | first express my gratitude
to you who have come from long
distances or from arduous tasks at
home, to do honor to this occasion
by your presence.
May I then thank our Committee Of
the Trustees and Faculty who have
wrought for months to make this
gathering significant. May / also
thank those who, in numberless quiet
ways. in kitchen and dining hall and
sewing room, have perfected the ar
rangements for the day.
It would be to me. a grateful task
If I could spend the time allotted me
in acknowledging our indebtedness to
those who, sixty-five years ago.
brought to this Ridge their dreams,
which counted with other men for
madness; and here, without advertis-
ing, without display, wrought their
dreams into the substance of the life
Of great college. One likes to look
at the pictures Of these men and wo-
men; strong they were, sane they
were, seeing life steadily and seeing
it whole. How beautiful it is that
this day we have with us upon this
very platform a woman who shared
with her husband the days of poverty
and of persecution, bore the brunt Of
it all, with courage, for the joy that
was set before her.
But this morning I must speak of
those whose burden has but now been
laid down.
Thirty-two years ago I studied
Greek under the man who for twenty
eight years has been supplying, as
he puts it, the lower rungs of the
ladder Of learning, by which the hum
Bile may climb. The vivid, concrete,
passionate speech, which uttered it.
self in our College classroom, made
vital and vitalizing the language
which we had understood was dead.
To pass from the quiet of Greek
class, to the administration Of a
school harassed by poverty and by
racial complications, meant a change
as great as that which our boys re-
Gently faced when they left the cam
pus for the camps of France.
President Frost has brought to
thousands of people a Christian edu-
cation, which, but for him, would
have been an impossibility.
The other day, in the mist of an
early morning, at a wayside station
in rural Virginia, l met by accident
four men. Each had been in Berea.
Over the ridge / climbed, and cross
ing a stream fourteen times, came
to little cup of emerald in the Ken
lucky mountains, and there I met ten
boys and girls who had been in Berea.
Or again, we took a six hours ride
on one train, and then a four hours
ride on another, and then a long ride
upon a narrow gauge line, and then
over impossible and almost impassa-
bic roads for ten miles or more, and
there, far up or the top of the Blue
Ridge, we found people from whose
two counties some two hundred stu
dents have come to Berea.
In these past twenty-eight years
there have been erected the Hospital,
the Chapel, the Industrial Building,
Pearsons Hall, Kentucky and Talcott
Halls, Blue Ridge and Cumberland
Halls, Putnam, Hunting and James
Halls. The five great schools of the
have gained self-concious-
ness and strength, and from these
i've schools have passed not less, prob
ably, than eight thousand five hun
ired students.
In this gracious work the Presi-
dents wife has taken large share.
Into the fabric Of Berea both have
poured their life blood. The names
IF President and Mrs. Frost must al
ways rank, I believe, among the
names Of the great educational
builders of America.
A soldier may well speak modestly
Of tactics and strategy, who has just
put on his armor for the long crusade.
II, then, ! speak tentatively rather
han dogmatically, II I speak of i'm
pressions more often than conclusions,
you will pardon me.
would speak of Berea's Change
ess Task in the midst Of Times of
Change.
In our world Of the Southern APP
the economic changes are
witt and momentous. We had been
riding down one of the most beautl-