What a weekend!
Apologies to all for not blogging from our conference. My wireless was not working properly and I ended up having very little downtime.
The conference was fantastic. We had about 300 people total (including spouses) join us for a weekend of information and updates on Wake Forest. Select highlights:
Martha Allman gave a really stirring presentation on the SAT optional decision and why this is the right move for Wake Forest. I will not do it justice here, but I may try to get her to let me have the text to post later.
Deans Morant (Law) and Reinemund (Business) had a conversation about their backgrounds, philosophy, and more as part of our meeting. It gave a lot of insight into what makes these two leaders tick and what they feel their roles are in educating attorneys and businesspeople, respectively.
We had a program on Saturday with Al Hunt, our Trustee and famed political journalist. He gave a very candid insider’s perspective on the election this fall (he thinks that all signs point to Obama winning, unless there is a major incident). Mr. Hunt was just as I remembered him - brilliant and charming and funny and self-effacing and genuine. One of the biggest thrills of my weekend was to get introduced to him again, because I am an admitted political junkie, grew up in the same neck of the woods as he did. And in my book, anyone who is that smart and that good to Wake Forest is someone I want to have the privilege of knowing.
What most people will talk about from the weekend was the banquet program, featuring two other iconic Wake Foresters: Ed Wilson and Arnold Palmer, who were interviewed by President Hatch. Someone who was present posted a synopsis of this on the unofficial WFU message boards (thank you, BeachDeac! I have a guess about who you are but you are welcome to out yourself to me if you want). I will post it at the end of this blog entry.
I got to have my picture taken with Mr. Palmer - another huge thrill, and will make my widowed mother’s entire year if she gets a copy, since my late father was an enormous golf fan. I got to shake his hand, talk to him in a pre-banquet walkthrough. He is the personification of a gentleman. Kind to all, funny, charming. Amazing.
We walked through the lobby of this hotel and it was like the parting of the Red Sea. People saw Mr. Palmer coming and they’d stop and sort of almost bow to him and say “Mr. Palmer” with a little bow of the head - or would say “Good evening, Mr. Palmer!” I felt like I was in the president’s entourage. As we continued walking, we saw a young man with 2 beautiful daughters, maybe 2 and 4 years old, and Mr. Palmer stopped to pat them on the head and smile at them. It was really a lovely moment to watch this man, arguably one of the most famous in the world, play with these two angelic girls.
Here is the recap of the banquet - again, with thanks to my friend BeachDeac:
Last night at the WFU Summer Leadership Conference (for the members of all the advisory boards of WFU) Dr. Hatch conducted a ‘conversation’ with Mr. Palmer and Dr. Wilson. To call it a ‘magical’ moment might come close to claiming the feeling of the moment.The first query was to ’tell us how you came to Wake Forest’.Arnold told of his friendship with Buddy Worsham, who had already decided to come to Wake. They were at a junior tournament in California when Worsham asked Palmer to join him at Wake. Turning down offers from Pitt, Penn State, and Miami, Palmer asked ‘can you play golf year round down there?’
He took a bus from Latrobe, PA to old Wake Forest, walked across the campus and into an office in Gore Gym. There sat ‘Peahead’ Walker and the golf coach, Jim Weaver. At that moment in telling the story Palmer choked up and finally said, ‘apart from my family…walking into that office that day at Wake Forest was the greatest thing that ever happened in my life.’ He was too emotional to speak further. This from a man who was the greatest golfer of his generation, winner of the Masters, US Open and so much more. To see the depth of his feeling for Wake Forest was amazing.
When Dr. Wilson was asked to do the same, he spoke of coming from Leaksville, NC (now Eden), a mill town. He had dreamed of going to Duke, but on a family trip back from the Outer Banks, they drove ‘through’ the old campus and did not stop. But he told his parents that ‘if’ he was able to go to college, he would like for it to be at Wake Forest. He further noted that he had hardly left since his freshman year. The only time he was away was to pursue his doctorate (at Harvard, I think).
Both men spoke of the professors who had shaped thier lives, the life long friends they had made, and the singular role that Wake Forest had played in their lives. They echoed one another in the hope that Wake Forest would always be a place where ‘guys like them’ could to go to school. They were refering to being the first in their families to go to college.
Dr. Wilson noted that it was symbolic of what Wake Forest is and has always been that the two of them were on the platform seated side by side for the conversation…an athlete and and an academic…
They represented the very best of Wake Forest’s past last night, because their generation is slipping away. But they inspired the future generations to make sure ‘guys like them’ could continue to find ‘a way’ to go to Wake Forest. The applause for both lasted a long time. Hopefully, it never ends.