Nourishing Mother

Off and on, I've been attending commencement celebrations at Millsaps since around 1970.  There are a few people who have attended more than I have, but not many.  Contenders would be people like Don Fotenberry, Bob McElvane, and David Woodward.  

As a child, I would watch my father practice speeches in front of the mirror in his bathroom.  Eventually, he got so accustomed to it that he quit using a mirror and would just do it in his office or in bed.  Until I got to be around nineteen, I rarely got to see any of Daddy's speeches because he delivered them at places that didn't allow little boys.  Millsaps did.   Afterward, I could run amock among the bushes, and nobody cared because Millsaps was just about the safest place they could think of, and there were so many trees to climb.

Weary of the world, I quit going to Millsaps for anything for a long time.  Until today, the last Millsaps graduation I attended was the one Sam and Erin were in.  Waiting to enter commencement today, A woman approached me.  "I bet you don't remember me!"  The shape of her face was familiar, but my wheels were spinning and not finding purchase.  It was Avery Nicholas's Grandmother.  The last time I saw her, she was attending football games where I played in the class between her two sons at St. Andrews in a year where we only won two games.  (Why St. Andrews struggled in football is another story.  It's an honorable story, though, one where Andy Mullins made a just choice rather than a convenient choice.)

Like my nephew Campbell Cooke, Avery is a third-generation Millsaps Graduate.  I'm sure there were others, but I also got to see another third-generation Millsaps Person.  Mary Ranager's father and uncle graduated from Millsaps, and her Grandfather coached football and baseball there for many years.  One of the points of a Millsaps education is that, whether you're third-generation or starting your first generation there, the Millsaps experience reaches back through time, connecting each graduate to generations before.  I spoke to one family where their child was the first in their family to ever go to any college, and they chose us, and now that graduate starts their multi-generational journey with Millsaps.

At Commencement, Provost and Acting President Keith Dunn awarded Stacy DeZutter the Distinguished Faculty Award.  One of my friends commented that Stacy was the new Darby Ray.  While I would never compare the two, Stacy does seem to be having the same impact on Millsaps that Darby did.  Both were like a comet that traveled through the Millsaps Solar system, with a gravitational attraction so strong, they changed the course of other bodies in the firmament.  I owe an infinite debt of gratitude to Stacy for nurturing the flame of theatre at Millsaps and keeping it alive until Sam could get there, and she did it on top of her already packed work schedule.

Thanks to Stacy's presence, two members of Alpha Psi Omega graduated today, and another two theater kids who weren't inducted.  Ryan McDougald and Michael Montgomery were in the first new class of Alpha Psi Omega initiates since the major was put into abeyance many years ago.  Best friends, their last performance at Millsaps was alone together in The Universal Language by David Ives.  Although he didn't have enough points to get into Alpha Psi Omega (having never acted before) Trey Clark also walked today.  He tells me he plans to attend Jackson State as a graduate student this fall.  Hopefully, he'll continue acting.  Amelia Savaric, who worked in both plays this semester, spent her senior year at Millsaps, but as an exchange student, she received her degree from her university in France.  I honestly wish I'd written down its name.  While every department at Millsaps had a graduating class this year, it's been a while since Theater had one, so I'm especially proud of them.

The Founders Medal is the highest academic award given at Millsaps.  I was never remotely a candidate, but my cousin Anne Powers was.  She was the only Campbell who left Hesterville, Mississippi, who ever achieved a high level of scholarship.  Most years, we only have one Founders Medal Winner.  It usually represents a perfect academic score at Millsaps.  We've had Five winners before.  Today we had four, the second-highest number ever.  This from a class who saw their second semester at Millsaps interrupted by covid and subsequent semesters interrupted by the Jackson Water Crisis.  I suppose adversity can yield excellence.

I got into an argument once with someone who told me not to value the opinion of students too much because, in the academy, students are transitory; the faculty is what matters.  I got sort of frustrated and didn't know how to respond at the moment, but it's been almost twenty years and I'm still thinking about what that means.  Students ARE transitory.  That's the point, isn't it?  They're traveling through time at a point in their life where time seems endless, and they chose us because, at Millsaps, they believe their transitory experience can transform their lives--and it does.  At the hooding ceremony for the Else School MBA class, Monty Hamilton talked about his transmission at Millsaps transformed his life.  I was there for part of it.  I can think of so many people I've seen who came to Millsaps as one thing, and left as another.  They were transitory.  We all are.

At graduation today, I saw a very muscular woman who wore only a sleeveless vest so she could show off her intricate tattoos and her shaved head.  I thought to myself, "This is someone determined to forge her own way in the world and create her own identity from whole cloth."  That's what Millsaps does for you.  It gives you the materials you need to forge your own identity--whatever you believe it should be.  One of the bigger things that sets us apart from other private colleges is that we don't give you values; we give you the tools to create your own, and people who create their own values serve them far better than those who accept what was given to them.

Alma Mater means "nourishing mother."  Bet you weren't expecting that.  The nourishing mother of our minds are our studies, and our studies achieve greater heights at our Alma Mater.  Loyal Ones are we.  When I graduated, that was changed from "Loyal Sons are we" because people noticed we weren't all boys anymore.  One class leaves, and another class arrives.  The Nourishing Mother remains.