Elizabeth Parker Haskins '76 Remarks to the Quaker Club on Jan. 30

Good Morning.  Thank you Elwood – I do want to mention that Elwood coached our team my first two years at Guilford and designed the offense to make sure I could get my shot off – I think he knew something about that.  It’s good to be with you all today.

As I gathered thoughts about what I might say this morning I kept returning to what my Guilford experience meant to me

• It’s steeped in history – my grandmother was in the Class of 1902.
• It’s infused with my Quaker heritage – I remember E. Kidd Lockard taking me down the hall to introduce me to Alex Stoessen to declare my history major and Josephine Moore clicking her glasses up to peer at me as she said more than once, “Isn’t that a rather broad generalization Ms. Parker” and Ed Burrows dividing our World Civilizations class into three sections so that we could gather in his office to ponder questions we initiated demanding that each of us participate in forming answers and Carol and Mary Feagins shepherding us to West and communist East Germany and introducing us to Quakers in both countries and Martha and Jim Cooley taking a group including Ellen and myself on a summer journey to both the Soviet Union and China and yes J.Floyd Moore’s comment on my essay in religion class “that was a wonderful winning shot you made to beat Pfeiffer last night.”  
• And without question Guilford provided an environment and a community to redefine for myself what it meant to be a Parker in the world.  You have to understand that Dr. Appenzeller would ask me every time he met me on campus, “Are you really a Parker?”  You see I’m pretty sure none of my brothers arranged their classes in the morning so that he could play bridge in the suite all afternoon and then make it to practice on time or enjoyed Serendipity quite as much as me – okay maybe Conrad did!

And so the tradition and heritage, but also the ability to redefine oneself was at the heart of my Guilford experience.

I’m reminded of this as I recall one of the special finds for me as we packed up my mother’s house last September.  It was a copy of the Baccalaureate Sermon Rufus Jones delivered to the Class of 1937 at Guilford.  I think what a time that must have been as young people like my mother made the hard choices that confronted them during the Great Depression.  Rufus Jones spoke from the 12th chapter of Hebrews, “Compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses …let us run with endurance the race set before us.” Using sports imagery at times, Jones eloquently urged the young people to “hold that line” and to finish the unfinished promise of their witnesses.  This morning as I think about my Guilford experience I feel very compassed by these clouds of witnesses.

I think of my Dad – unlike my older brothers I never saw him in competition – but I saw him laugh deeply and with delight as he took a basketball in the back yard and somehow would flick his wrists from his waist to hit a two handed set shot with very little arc from what would have been center court always hitting nothing but net – and I learned the joy in shots taken and in baskets made.

And I think of my husband John – we were brought together by our mutual joy in basketball.  When I found out the brother of my friend’s new husband practiced with Loyola’s national championship team I was determined to meet him you see.  John was one of the best high school basketball players in Chicago in his day – he knew how to score, not because he had the quickest feet or the most athletic build but because according to his friends, he anticipated a defender’s approach and used just the right angle to get off his shot quickly.  And I learned to appreciate the craft of the sport.

And I think today especially of Kay Yow and our other foremothers of women’s sports.  I understand that she and Gayle Currie were the only full-time college women coaches at the time.  You see I was at Guilford when Title IX was first enacted, although mine was a voice advocating that we do something different from the boys with the newly allocated resources.  I’ve been so fortunate to have so many strong mentors to help me – Kitty Steele - who I’m sure couldn’t believe I could run up and down a basketball court when I couldn’t bicycle around Fleming Road and back to Guilford without falling in a ditch – Joyce Clark, and especially Gayle Currie here at Guilford.  My sister-in-law June saw me through my early teaching career and Patty Nolan-Fitzgerald modeled an administrator to be admired for me.  My friends from Guilford (my husband called my college fiends the pit bulls) they kept me on track and laughing – they are flying from across the country to be with me tonight.  These women taught me, critiqued me, confronted me, yelled at me, cajoled me, but most of all took the time to be my friend.  And I learned to value companionship. 

I invite you now to think about the clouds of witnesses that compass you, (Pause) but also to think about the promise they left unrealized.   Because neither Rufus Jones in 1937 nor Paul in the years of early Christendom stopped with the clouds of witnesses; instead, they pointed to the race set before and to the endurance it would take to keep that appointment.  Conditions at Guilford as in the nation were bleak in 1937.  Rufus Jones called on the young people in that class to forge ahead, keeping in touch with a faith in unseen but enduring ideals, to refashion their communities, their nation, their world.  Those young people were in most cases our parent’s generation.  They have done their work!  Without question they provided the support we needed to define our lives anew.

Today as we look ahead in 2009 I think it behooves us to question.  What will the next generation say of our race?  How will they qualify our endurance? How can we, today, as members of the Quaker Club best serve and support the young people we see before us on the football, soccer and baseball fields, in the gym, on the tennis, basketball and volleyball courts?  How do we help provide structure – an umbrella – under which each new class at Guilford becomes the group of students “for whom the school has waited”?  As seekers I suggest it is a Guilford tradition – it is her heritage.

Thank you – I look forward to seeing you during this weekend’s festivities.