Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1920) Butler University
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Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University Butler Alumnal Quarterly University Special Collections 1920 Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1920) Butler University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/bualumnalquarterly Part of the Other History Commons Recommended Citation Butler University, "Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1920)" (1920). Butler Alumnal Quarterly. Book 10. http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/bualumnalquarterly/10 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Special Collections at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Butler Alumnal Quarterly by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Butler Alumnal Quarterly FOUNDER'S DAY NUMBER Dedicated to Katharine Merrill Graydon APRIL, 1920 Volume IX Number 1 INDIANAPOLIS Entered as second-class matter March 26, 1912, at the post office at Indianapolis, Ind., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/butleralumnalqua09butl MISS KATHARINE MERRILL GRAYDON — — — —— — — — Katharine Merrill Graydon To envision life largely To feel and thereby with prescient insight know that in this world of ours true values in only things of spirit lie To love the true, the beautiful, the good To unselfish be of mind and heart and service To remember where others have forgot To instant be in season where duty and affection call To be known of many friendly -souls and loved and honored by them all That were something That is she. Scot Butler. Butler Alumnal Quarterly Vol. IX INDIANAPOLIS, IND., APRIL, 1920 No. 1 We Do Thee Honor Miss Graydon, as Catharine Merrill Professor of English, occu- pies an admirable and unique place in the history of Butler College. It was a good day for the college when she became one of its fac- ulty. A graduate of Butler, having studied in other famous insti- tutions, a college teacher of experience, bound to her Alma Mater by many ties, she has brought to her work a loving devotion and intelli- gence entirely above praise. She has been invariably loyal to the administration of the college ; never has she shirked the arduous committee duties that have been hers; she has bound the alumni of Butler together and to the college by her creation of the Alum- nal Quarterly ; she has been one of the best of helpers on a faculty that has always been rare for the quality of its service ; she is idolized by the hosts of students whom she has instructed and helped and whose interest she has made her o^^^l not only in the class room but out to the ends of the earth. Everywhere in the world, where Butler students are, these honor Miss Graydon. We all know her for her good works. She is a type of American college professor—is the type vanishing or old-fash- ioned?—whose spirit of service and self-sacrifice is one of the best and most priceless things in American life. Miss Graydon is a true woman and a true teacher. Hers will be a bright name in Butler ' College history. Thomas C. Howe. 6 Butler Alumnal Quarterly One counts. If the one happens to be a Miss Katharine Graydon it counts big. We realize this to the full now that Miss Graydon is away, and we have had opportunity to measure some of the work that she has been doing for Butler College. We can not bring her back now, and ought not to do so until her well-earned vacation is completed. But we can and do dedicate to her these pages expres- sive of our esteem and our fervent wish for her happy return to Butler in the best of health and spirits. Hilton U. Brown. I consider it a privilege to be permitted to express my apprecia- tion of Katharine Graydon. Those of us who were of the student body in the middle nineties did not come under the influence of this good woman in the class room. Some of us know her through the more or less intermittent contact our professional business and domestic affairs have permitted us to have with the college, mainly through the Alumni Association. Of that organization, she has been the inspiration. In her is combined the frailty of her sex which impels one to come to her support and the dynamic loyalty of the undergraduate. It is a rare combination which makes Kath- arine Graydon an extraordinary woman. Her loyalty has never lost any of its fire. It is good for people to know Katharine Graydon. The world needs more women like her. No less wholesome is the influence of herself and her kind for young men and women than for those of mature years, whose routine affairs are those of commerce. It seems to me that one of her most endearing qualities is that of apprecia- tion. I have been deeply impressed by her spontaneous exhibitions of that trait in connection with Butler's tributes to her service men. It has been an honor for men to fight for women at home like Katharine Graydon. And as long as there are such women will there be men who will go through hell for them. If it is, as I believe it should be, the principal function of a col- lege to build character, then Butler College has an asset, indeed, in her whom these lines are intended to honor. R. A. Bull. Allegro and Penseroso A relative of Miss Graydon's once told me about his invention of the ideal letter of recommendation. A discharged employe asked him to draft a recommendation for which he could get other signa- tures. In considerable embarrassment, he finally hit upon this form, "I gladly recommend the bearer for any position for which he is qualified." The applicant afterward thanked him profusely; no- body had refused to sign his letter. I would gladly recommend Miss Graydon ''for any position," without qualification, on my part, I mean ; for according to my observation she is amply able to fill any position on earth. In fact I feel certain, from seeing her work in the Quarterly, that even celestial positions would not be beyond her ability; she would certainly make a good recording angel. At Butler she has, at different times, served in the two highest salaried types of positions in the educational world; ath- letic coach—was not the whole football team in her Browning class one semester—and janitor—have you ever seen her in the main building the afternoon before a Founder's Day address or a Com- mencement? She has taught Greek, English, and war literature. She has conducted banquets and memorial services. She and her sisters built one of the most attractive residences in the city and, in spite of the efforts of one of the best architects of whom I know, they got it finished at the schedule time. She even succeeded, at times, in getting matter through the official board of publications on East Washington Street without any improvement being made in it. She is a writer of rare charm, and a successful editor. Just now, she has been called half-way around the world to act as pageant-master and centennial director. She is a worker of tireless energy and respect-compelling efficiency, and into aU drudgery of detail she carries the spirit of Virgil's line, "forsan et Jiaec olim meminisse juvahit."* So I ask, is there any position she can not fill? But this is not a letter of recommendation. Neither is it, I am glad to think, an obituary notice. And yet it is not out of place in the Quarterly. Nor is there any demand, embarrassing to an historian, to depart from the strict truth. I am merely asked, as The writer has a daughter who is now studying Virgil. 7 8 Butler Alumnal Quarterly an associate of Miss Graydon 's for some fifteen years on the faculty of Butler College, to take advantage of her absence to give the readers of the Quarterly a colleague's appreciation of her person- ality and her services. As one who was a member of the faculty when Miss Graydon, in 1906, became the incumbent of the Catha- rine Merrill Chair of English Literature, and who is not now con- nected with the college in any official way, it may be appropriate for me in these pages^both to give unreserved expression to the pleasure of past associations and to frankly avow my admiration of the great and devoted ser^dce which Miss Graydon has rendered Butler College. In the new era which the interest of the alumni is ushering in, it is well to remember how much of that interest has been nurtured by the Quarterly and by the correspondence and hospitality of its editor. Before Miss Graydon began her work with us, the alumni were like sheep without a shepherd. They lived their OAvn lives without much knowledge of each other or of their Alma Mater. Class associations, unless they culminated in matrimony, frequently died out soon after graduation. Students left, with the kindliest of feelings toward the institution and the faculty, feelings which were fully reciprocated on the other side, but in too many cases they lost touch with Butler and were lost to Butler in the course of a few years. The Quarterly and its indefatigable creator gathered news from far and near and gave it to a "v^^dening circle. Alumni and former students soon found themselves part of an enlarged family, among whose members warm and friendly feelings were maintained.