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Distinguished Alumni speech
Oct 13, 2005 4:02 PM
By Tannika King - Faculty
Read the address given by Joyce Riddle Neely ('62T) at Darlington Celebration Oct. 7. Neely and George Griffin ('38) were named this year's Distinguished Alumni.
As you have just heard, George spoke to some of us as valedictorian of his class. Today he’s taking a break, and has graciously allowed me to say our thank you’s together. So I pass on to you that George is grateful to have been a lifelong student at Darlington, that Darlington prepared him well for college and the world beyond. He has fond memories from the early days at East Ninth Street School all the way through to his graduation from Darlington in 1938.
Certainly it is an honor to share the podium with such an accomplished and beloved man as George Griffin – even a little intimidating – so, in preparation, I looked for common bonds, and it was not an easy task.
As we have seen, George distinguished himself wherever life led. On his way back from Pearl Harbor at the end of WWII, he was interviewed by the Armed Forces Radio. He said he just wanted to get home to Rome and marry Alice Cooper. Always a man of his word, that’s just what he did. Alice Cooper Griffin may be my common bond with George. She was on the first Thornwood Board, so I think it’s safe to say without her I wouldn’t be here with George as a Darlington alum.
This search for common bonds began to feel like bad dialogue in a weak Woody Allen movie, but I couldn’t let it go. In a “how in the world did I get here” moment, I decided … it’s luck.
I have a lucky birthdate, making me the oldest member of the first graduating class of Thornwood. Classmates, are you out there? Let’s hear a whoop for “we’re the first of the gray and blue, Thornwood’s class of ’62!” Certainly I was lucky to be the right age to attend Thornwood soon after her creation and to have great classmates.
And luck linked me with outstanding committee members on the Board. Some spent long hours on the survey done a couple of years ago, with Dick Cornwell, Bob Harbin and the rest of the Survey Subcommittee doing a masterful job. Without them, a good idea would never have come to fruition. Gordon Lee, always there lending encouragement. Bill Kelly and Linda Owens did great work on the Eduation and Student Life Subcommittee, spending hours interviewing the Darlington family and letting me have a small part in the editing of the final product. Riddle family support, financial and otherwise, including husband Joe feeding the cat when I’m gone for three-day meetings.
So, first class, oldest alumna, great co-workers, family support making me look good … OK, maybe, but my angst was alleviated only when I realized – duhhh (I can hear our daughters saying) it’s not about you mom, and it isn’t. It’s about the spirit of women like Alice Cooper Griffin. As board members, she and Ann Morgan were role models for all of us at Thornwood, bringing to “Little Women” the same values that fueled education at Darlington.
Now listen up here, how many women in this audience have been involved in the life of Darlington or Thornwood – for this quiz you can count attending dances if you were pre-Thornwood, serving on committees for either school, paying tuition for children or grandchildren, making lunches, parents counsel, helping with homework, the Boards, driving car pool, being a student or being married to one. Raise your hands. Hold them high. Look around you. As the first woman to receive this award, I ask your permission to accept it on behalf of all of us – women who have supported Darlington in countless ways over our lifetimes, and the first 100 years of the School.
That’s a glorious history of service, but what does our standing here mean for the future of Darlington? Hopefully it’s the last nail in the coffin to the idea that Darlington is a boy’s school that admits girls. We’re now co-ed partners! It means we are going to find talent wherever it exists and use it to the fullest. It means other “firsts” will stand here, soon I hope, representing people of color and other nationalities besides “Southern.”
Globally we are in a new millennium, and our students are global – www, world-wide Web – every day. Locally, Darlington is entering her second century, and we have a wonderful new headmaster leading us. Technology has taken on a life of its own, forcing change to which we have to adjust. Instant messages may give way to something called “bubble talk” – as in Asia where IM’s can be verbal. We are forced to learn new skills before we have mastered the older ones. We feel forced to learn to swim, even as we are going over Niagra Falls. But learn we must. As a student-centered school, we must encourage imagination, communication, and problem-solving along with the basics, so you, our graduates, will be equipped to make your way in unfamiliar and often troubled waters. Darlington may look different as our courses adjust to meet this global challenge, but our feet will stay firmly planted on the integrity and energy represented by George and Alice Griffin, and all of us here today. George and I are honored to have our families associated with the 100th celebration and even more excited to be a part of the future here at Darlington.
George and I thank you.
As you have just heard, George spoke to some of us as valedictorian of his class. Today he’s taking a break, and has graciously allowed me to say our thank you’s together. So I pass on to you that George is grateful to have been a lifelong student at Darlington, that Darlington prepared him well for college and the world beyond. He has fond memories from the early days at East Ninth Street School all the way through to his graduation from Darlington in 1938.
Certainly it is an honor to share the podium with such an accomplished and beloved man as George Griffin – even a little intimidating – so, in preparation, I looked for common bonds, and it was not an easy task.
As we have seen, George distinguished himself wherever life led. On his way back from Pearl Harbor at the end of WWII, he was interviewed by the Armed Forces Radio. He said he just wanted to get home to Rome and marry Alice Cooper. Always a man of his word, that’s just what he did. Alice Cooper Griffin may be my common bond with George. She was on the first Thornwood Board, so I think it’s safe to say without her I wouldn’t be here with George as a Darlington alum.
This search for common bonds began to feel like bad dialogue in a weak Woody Allen movie, but I couldn’t let it go. In a “how in the world did I get here” moment, I decided … it’s luck.
I have a lucky birthdate, making me the oldest member of the first graduating class of Thornwood. Classmates, are you out there? Let’s hear a whoop for “we’re the first of the gray and blue, Thornwood’s class of ’62!” Certainly I was lucky to be the right age to attend Thornwood soon after her creation and to have great classmates.
And luck linked me with outstanding committee members on the Board. Some spent long hours on the survey done a couple of years ago, with Dick Cornwell, Bob Harbin and the rest of the Survey Subcommittee doing a masterful job. Without them, a good idea would never have come to fruition. Gordon Lee, always there lending encouragement. Bill Kelly and Linda Owens did great work on the Eduation and Student Life Subcommittee, spending hours interviewing the Darlington family and letting me have a small part in the editing of the final product. Riddle family support, financial and otherwise, including husband Joe feeding the cat when I’m gone for three-day meetings.
So, first class, oldest alumna, great co-workers, family support making me look good … OK, maybe, but my angst was alleviated only when I realized – duhhh (I can hear our daughters saying) it’s not about you mom, and it isn’t. It’s about the spirit of women like Alice Cooper Griffin. As board members, she and Ann Morgan were role models for all of us at Thornwood, bringing to “Little Women” the same values that fueled education at Darlington.
Now listen up here, how many women in this audience have been involved in the life of Darlington or Thornwood – for this quiz you can count attending dances if you were pre-Thornwood, serving on committees for either school, paying tuition for children or grandchildren, making lunches, parents counsel, helping with homework, the Boards, driving car pool, being a student or being married to one. Raise your hands. Hold them high. Look around you. As the first woman to receive this award, I ask your permission to accept it on behalf of all of us – women who have supported Darlington in countless ways over our lifetimes, and the first 100 years of the School.
That’s a glorious history of service, but what does our standing here mean for the future of Darlington? Hopefully it’s the last nail in the coffin to the idea that Darlington is a boy’s school that admits girls. We’re now co-ed partners! It means we are going to find talent wherever it exists and use it to the fullest. It means other “firsts” will stand here, soon I hope, representing people of color and other nationalities besides “Southern.”
Globally we are in a new millennium, and our students are global – www, world-wide Web – every day. Locally, Darlington is entering her second century, and we have a wonderful new headmaster leading us. Technology has taken on a life of its own, forcing change to which we have to adjust. Instant messages may give way to something called “bubble talk” – as in Asia where IM’s can be verbal. We are forced to learn new skills before we have mastered the older ones. We feel forced to learn to swim, even as we are going over Niagra Falls. But learn we must. As a student-centered school, we must encourage imagination, communication, and problem-solving along with the basics, so you, our graduates, will be equipped to make your way in unfamiliar and often troubled waters. Darlington may look different as our courses adjust to meet this global challenge, but our feet will stay firmly planted on the integrity and energy represented by George and Alice Griffin, and all of us here today. George and I are honored to have our families associated with the 100th celebration and even more excited to be a part of the future here at Darlington.
George and I thank you.
