Sheridan Simon Lectures

Introductory Remark to the First Lecture

Let me begin with a very short joke, which requires a less short introduction. I think this story is appropriate in four ways: First, I heard it in a talk by Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Second, it describes how startled we all were when we learned that Sheridan had a serious disease. Third, this story always reminds me of one of the ways in which I most frequently saw Sheridan and Rose during the last two or three years I lived in Greensboro: most Sunday mornings, they were out at the park taking a brisk walk, and I would encounter them as I tried to take a long run. You'll see the relevance. And fourth, and finally, this story describes rather exactly a large part of my own current vocational situation:

It seems a snail was unwisely walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago late at night, and was mugged by a couple of turtles. Later the snail was recovering and reporting the crime at the local station of the Chicago police. The first question that the detectives asked about the turtle-mugging rats, "Can you tell us just what went down?" The snail replied, "I don't know, officers, it all happened so fast..."

When I was at Guilford, Sheridan introduced, and I embraced, the efficient and cute device of referring to himself as SS¹ and to me as SS². I don't think that the implication was that I was in any way Sheridan squared, but rather that the superscript numbers referred to antiquity on the Guilford campus (and to me at least, brightness). Oddly, it was not only in our initials that we could be confused. Several times during my decade here, folk misapprehended Sheridan for Sam or Schuman for Simon. My assumption was that the hidden cause of this error was similar to that which would lead someone to mistake Michael Jordan for James Baldwin! Just in case any of you are suffering from this identity bewilderment, Schuman is the one with the moustache, Simon the one with the brain.

It was while I was Dean that we began asking Sheridan to speak to prospective students at the annual Honors interview day. His response was his wonderfully informative and hysterically zany lecture on "Black Holes" (e.g., In a Black Hole, the mass and therefore the weight of the entire solar system would take up about as much space as the tip of your little finger, which makes it very inconvenient to move around. I always retained the image of the poor sucker trying to jog or play basketball carrying around a little finger that weighed billions of pounds.) After hearing the lecture once, we decided that it should become a perennial centerpiece of this particular recruitment venture. It was obvious that if anyone listened to the "Black Hole" lecture and didn't immediately decide she or he wanted to come to Guilford, they were surely not the kind of student we needed.

Sheridan exemplifies what Guilford and liberal arts colleges like it are about. He has a mind both wide and deep. His interests are (you should pardon the expression) catholic, yet his learning is scholarly and serious. He is an entertaining and delightful teacher, whose standards are uncompromising and rigorous. His students testify that he pushes them hard to achieve their utmost, and is absolutely unstinting in his eagerness to help them meet his high expectations for them. He is respected, admired, and loved as a teacher and colleague.

It is a fine and appropriate gesture to have initiated this lecture series to honor Sheridan, but I must admit that I do not envy Steve Harvey, and am glad to be part of the introductory package rather than the main event. Giving a lecture in honor of Sheridan Simon is rather like composing a drama in honor of Shakespeare--with the bard conspicuously ensconced in the pit! Knowing we all want to have done with the prologue and get on to the real thing, let me conclude by thanking you for the honor of being part of this happy event.

Samuel Schuman Former Guilford College Dean and Professor