Alumni and Friends of VMI:
Cyber Corps Numbers: 580
John O'Connor
VMI Assistant Track Coach Dies
John O'Connor, 34, an assistant track coach at VMI, died
unexpectedly of cardiac arrest early Tuesday morning at the
Institute's training room.
O'Connor has worked at VMI for six years and was a graduate of
Kent State University.
He is survived by his wife, Amy of Lexington and two daughters.
No further details were available as of press time.
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Rockbridge Weekly News Roundup
News from around the Rockbridge Region compiled from local
correspondents & reporters, news releases and governmental
sources.
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Jackson House Introduces Walking Tours Of Lexington
In celebration of Jackson's 175th birthday in 1999 the Stonewall
Jackson House in Lexington is introducing a summer evening
walking tour of Jackson's Lexington.
The tour will explore historic Lexington and feature
nineteenth-century buildings and sites related to the famous
Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, who lived here in
the decade prior to the Civil War.
A complimentary tour will be held on Tuesday, July 6 beginning at
5:30 p.m. The tour begins at the Jackson House, covers 1.5 miles
of Lexington streets and last onehour and fifteen minutes.
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Meanwhile, down South, a potentially dangerous contagion:
Citadel hesitant on college merger plan
Wednesday, June 30, 1999
By KRISTINA TORRES
Of The Post and Courier staff
Offering doctoral degrees is an option
The Citadel is studying even as a Statehouse committee explores
the possible merger of Charleston's state colleges into one big
university, the military college's president told committee
members Tuesday.
Some program collaboration among local
colleges could be good, said Maj. Gen. John Grinalds, adding that
"I'm optimistic about what you all are looking at."
But any attempt to dilute The Citadel's
unique identity would mean "they're going to have to come
across my dead body."
Committee members met with Grinalds and
other Citadel staff just as they have met these past few months
with officials from Medical University of South Carolina and
College of Charleston.
Appointed by local legislators to gather
data and study the merger, they are on track to issue a report
Sept. 30.
"There was not and is not any
effort to take anyone's identity," said committee chairman
and former state legislator Harry Hallman. "I want to
reassure you, any report we write is not going to take away from
any resources you have now."
Instead, he noted that the committee was
especially interested in higher-degree programs.
"I think we have an opportunity to
be successful by combining three institutions to do some
doctorate work as opposed to three separate institutions doing
that work on their own," Hallman said.
The merger idea, considered off and on
for decades, was resurrected last year by Sen. Arthur Ravenel.
He and other supporters cite possible
savings and more educational choices for local residents.
They argue that a major university would
offer doctoral degrees - now offered only at MUSC, in the
sciences - and more master's programs in the Charleston area.
Skeptics argue that the creation of a
comprehensive university with worthwhile advanced degree programs
could cost millions.
It could force existing universities to
share already meager funds. It could spawn duplication and
obscure the identities of the schools involved.
Lawmakers in January worried that a
college merger involving The Citadel would destroy its identity,
though it should be noted that the school's graduate program,
considered a separate school on campus, does not have the
military aspect of the bachelor's program.
The school first offered graduate
courses in 1968 and now offers six graduate degree programs that
include areas of concentration not available at other local
colleges.
Enrollment in those programs continues
to grow - summer enrollment's up 17 percent this year over last -
and the school is also considering the addition of more graduate
programs.
Grinalds said doctoral programs in
educational leadership and school psychology "are logical
choices for expansion" since the school already offers more
advanced courses in those areas.
The committee Grinalds met with Tuesday
has asked several professors from MUSC and the College of
Charleston to suggest advanced degrees that the schools could
cooperatively offer.
It was suggested that Grinalds have some
of his professors make similar suggestions.
Committee members include James A.
Grimsley, former Citadel president; Harry Lightsey, former
College of Charleston president; MUSC President James Edwards;
and former state Rep. Lucille Whipper.
A Happy Fourth of July to All: Bill Nay '77
sent this to me. It's his tribute to the 4th. It says it all.
Douglas MacArthur, General of the Army
Farewell Address to the US Military Academy
at West Point
May 12, 1962
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as
this, coming from a profession I have served so long and a people
I have loved so well. It fills me with an emotion I cannot
express. But this award is not intended primarily for a
personality, but to symbolize a great moral code--the code of
conduct and chivalry of those who guard this belovedland of
culture and ancient descent.
"Duty, honor,&country"-- those three hallowed words
reverently dictate what you want to be, what you can be, what you
will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when
courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be
littlecause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that
poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell
you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a
flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic,
every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some
others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade
them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they build. They build your
basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the
custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough
to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when
you are afraid.
They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but
humble and gentle in success, not to substitute words for action,
not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur
of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm,
but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself
before you seek to master others, to have a heart that is clean,
a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to
weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be
serious, yet never take yourself too seriously- to be modest so
that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open
mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor
of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a
temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite
for adventure overlove of ease.
They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope
of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you
in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they
reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?
Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the
American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the
battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I
regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's
noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military
characters, but also as one of the most stainless.
His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen.
In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that
mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other
man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his
enemy's breast.
In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand
campfires,I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that
patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determinatlon
which have carved his statue in thehearts of his people.
From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the
chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs in memory's eye
I could see those staggering columns of the First World War,
bending under soggy packs on many a weary march from dripping
dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of
shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped,
covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain,
driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment
seat of God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory
of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with
faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would
go on to victory.
Always for them: duty, honor, country. Always their blood, and
sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light. And 20 years
after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty
foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping
dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those
torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter
desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of
those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic
disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.
Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure
attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive
victory--always victory, always through the bloody haze of their
last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men,
reverently following your password of duty, honor, country.
You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into
outer space of the satellite spheres and missiles marks a
beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the
five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has
taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of
development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt
or staggering evolution.
We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the
illimitable distances and yet unfathomed mysteries of the
universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.
We speak in strange terms of harnessing the cosmic energy, of
making winds and tides work for us . . . of the primary target in
war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but
instead to include his civil population; of ultimate conflict
between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other
planetary galaxy; such dreams and fantasies as to make life the
most exciting of all times.
And through all this welter of change and development your
mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our
wars. Everything else in your proresslonal career is but
corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all
other public projects, all other public needs, great or small
will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones
who are trained to fight.
Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure
knowledge thatin war there is no substitute for victory, that if
you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession
of your public service must beduty, honor, country.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and
international, which divide men's minds. But serene, calm,aloof,
you stand as the Nation's war guardians, as its lifeguards from
the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in
the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended,
guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and
freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes
of government: Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit
financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too
mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too
corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by
taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether
our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should
be.
These great national problems are not for your professional
participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out
like a tenfold beacon in the night: duty, honor, country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our
national system of defense. From your ranks come the great
captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment
the war tocsin sounds.
The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a
million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray
would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic
words: duty, honor, country.
This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the
soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must
suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always
in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all
philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days
of old have vanished-- tone and tints. They have gone glimmering
through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of
wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the
smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the
witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums
beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of
musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in
the evening of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there
echoes and reechoes: duty, honor, country.
Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know
that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be
of the corps, and the corps, and the corps.
I bid you farewell.
That's it for this week.
Yours in the Spirit,
RB Lane '75
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