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On Saying: "Thank You" a sermon by The Reverend Dr. James T. Cleland December 8, 1974 Scripture Lessons:
It is our loss, at this very special service in the life of Duke University, that Harold Bosley, former Dean of the Divinity School and Preacher to the University, cannot occupy the pulpit as he had hoped. He is a pulpiteer, extraordinary. I am not here as a pinch-hitter, for that would assume that I can do a better job than the one whose place I am taking, and that is not true. I am here as a last-minute substitute, just one who takes another's place in the case of the latter's absence. It is good to know that Dr. Bosley is on the way to recovered health. Now to the sermon proper.
Once upon a time - all the best stories start that way - a young boy in a Glasgow trolley car rose and offered a dowager his seat. She took it. A minute later, he said to her: "I beg your pardon." She replied: "I didn't say anything." "Oh", he answered, "I thought you said: 'Thank you.'" He should probably be spanked; but she was properly and publicly reprimanded. There is one person who would have backed the youngster - Jesus of Nazareth - judging from the story of the cleansing of the ten lepers, (Luke 17:11-19). Jesus effected the cleansing of the ten, but only one came back to say "thank you", and he was a Samaritan, a foreigner. Jesus' only comment was: "Were not all ten cleansed? The other nine, where are they?" Even Jesus expected folk to say: "Thank you." We are gathered here this morning to say "Thank you", which ought to be one of the most common phrases heard in a house of God. And we are saying it to, and because of, James Buchanan Duke, tobacco magnate, hydro-electric power entrepreneur, who in his New Jersey home, on December 11, 1924, officially signed the papers establishing the Duke Endowment. That fact was announced by a Charlotte paper on December 8, three days before: that J. B. Duke was creating a charitable trust, "designed to better the quality of life in his native region, the Carolinas." But interestingly enough, today, another December 8, is an important date in the life of Duke University, especially for undergraduates. On that day in 1884, Angier Buchanan Duke was born, son of Benjamin Newton Duke and nephew of J. B. Duke. Today would be his 90th birthday. However, he was drowned in a boating accident in 1923; and his father established the Angier B. Duke Memorial, our invaluable scholarship fund for undergraduates, in his son's memory. So, today, we of the academic community say "Thank you" twice, once to J. B. Duke, and once to Benjamin N. Duke, who remembered his son by assisting distinguished high school seniors who needed financial help to pursue a college education of quality.
Now, how does one do justice to the many-faceted character of J. B. Duke in one point of a single sermon? He grew up on a farm in what is now Durham County, a prosperous 300 acres, until the Civil War wrecked the economy. But Washington Duke, J.B.'s father, saw that there was a future for tobacco. He passed on his wisdom and his know-how to his son, who surpassed it and became such a magnate of the fragrant weed, the vice that is so close to virtue--especially a pipe. He so dominated the manufacture of cigarettes that the Supreme Court had to move in and order the dissolution of the American Tobacco Co., of which he was president. I have been told that J. B. Duke was entrusted with the job of dissolution, because nobody understood the situation as he did. That more or less, ended his interest in tobacco, except for his own enjoyment of cigars. See his statue. Dean Cannon once shocked a Methodist minister, who wanted the cigar removed from the statue, by suggesting that it ought to have a neon light at the end. And one senior class is reported to have offered as its gift a steam pipe running through the cigar so that it would puff. But the predecessors of Allen Building turned that down. J. B. Duke turned to hydro-electric power in the two Carolinas. And, thanks to his creating a whole new source of power, Vice President Juanita Kreps was able to bring to sparkling life our campus Christmas tree, last Friday evening. But J. B. Duke was not satisfied, though he had given the Carolinas the chance to develop and diversify industry. Perhaps, he was influenced by the life and action of Andrew Carnegie, that immigrant Scot who made a fortune in steel, and who once commented: "no rich man should go to his grave, with all his riches." J. B. Duke established the Duke Endowment, from which we benefit. Yet our University does not bear his name. It is named for his father, whom he admired and loved. James Buchanan Duke died less than a year after the creation of the Duke Endowment, on October 10, 1925. The bodies of the father and his two sons are at rest in the Memorial Chapel, which was built by donations from his friends.
Now, what was J. B. Duke's aim in setting up the Endowment? He answered the question in one sentence, when he was asked what was the most important thing he had done with his life? A tobacco empire and the reorganization of that empire? No. The stimulus given to industry in the Carolinas, by his development of hydro-electric power? No. His answer was: "The creation of the Duke Endowment, for through it I make men. " Now, women's libbers, don't be upset by this. After all, back in 1896, his father, Washington Duke, said he would give $100,000 for endowment, if, if, Trinity College would admit women. When J. B. Duke talked of "making men", he meant "men, embracing women" -- if I may put it that way. You know the areas of the Endowment's interest. First, higher education: not merely Duke, but Davidson, and Furman, and Johnson C. Smith, representing Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists and Blacks. These four schools receive 46% of the income of the Endowment. Second and third, hospitals in both Carolinas, including child care, the care of orphans; they receive 32%. Fourth, the Methodist churches, for the building of rural churches and retirement benefits for preachers and their families -- 12%. Together, these four areas of interest still receive 90% of the income of the Duke Endowment, which, during the first 50 years, has given $378,400,698 to its beneficiaries. Let me share with you what this means to one of the academic institutions. I shall leave Duke to Dr. Paul Gross who, on Wednesday of this week at 4:00 p.m., in the auditorium of the Chemical Laboratory, so rightly named after him, will speak on: "Fifty Years of Duke University and the Duke Endowment". I am personally beholden to Dr. Gross, who has given, and still gives to Duke, of his wide-ranging wisdom and his uncomfortable common sense. He persuaded me to stay at Duke, when I thought of leaving for Union Theological Seminary in New York. But that is another story. Come and hear him on Wednesday afternoon. Let me rather tell you what the Endowment has meant to one of the other schools. When I taught at Amherst College, in the thirties and early forties, up there in Massachusetts, we knew of three-academic institutions in North Carolina: first, the University, because of its president, the late and great Frank Graham; second, Davidson, because its academic prowess, as attested by the number of Rhodes Scholars; third, Duke, because of its football coach, Wallace Wade. I happen to have an unearned degree from Davidson, so let me quote or paraphrase some sentences from a recent article by its president, Samuel R. Spencer, entitled: "Duke Endowment Aids Davidson for 50 Years." The creation of the Duke Endowment was the biggest financial event, in the history of the College... a welcome surprise ... an important turning point. In December 1924 ... Davidson was in the grips of its own private depression. (It had lost its academic center and a dorm by fire, just when its student enrollment was steadily rising -- more than doubling between 1918 and 1924.) The Endowment kept Davidson from making cuts in salary and staff when the 1930 depression hit, and aided in similar fashion when the 1940 war reduced the student body to 200. The Endowment has not only given Davidson over $14,000,000 since 1924, it has added special appropriations for its Library, its Humanities course, its Honors College, its South-Asian studies. The Endowment has been both bread - and - brother support strong incentive to new projects and facilities. Furman can say "Amen to such statements; so can Johnson Smith; so can Duke. Why does The Chronicle say so little, if anything, in this spirit? Why? Today, I say it in wondering gratitude.
The glad tidings for us and for the generations to come is that the Duke Endowment is a continuing concern, an ongoing affair, dependent on two groups of persons. One is the trustees, and the good news about them is that so many of them live in the Carolinas. Charlotte, like New York, is one of the headquarters of the Endowment. The trustees, can, and do, see at first hand the varying communities which the Endowment serves, and to them, we say "Thank you." And, behind them, not seen so often by us, is the professional staff, who implement the decisions of the Board. Two of them I know well. And I have discovered, with joy, that the professional staff, individually and collectively, believe in James Buchanan Duke's vision so embracing and so diverse, so necessary for the enlarging of wisdom and health and spiritual welfare. They have not warped the vision, nor tampered with its intent. In dedication, they seek to perpetuate Its validity. We recognize and thank them.
You know that it was Mr. Duke's desire that a towering chapel be at the heart of the University. He was a man of faith, of great faith of genuine faith, with a firm belief in the Eternal, a strong confidence in the Christian religion and in the Methodist Church. He would be pleased with two statistics: Last Easter Sunday, between 1800 and 2000 turned up in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens for the 7 a.m. service., There were 1000 at the 9 a.m. service in the Chapel and 2000 at the 11 a.m. service. That evening, there were around 1800 right here when the N.C. symphony joined the Duke choir in a glorious rendition of Mahler's "Resurrection Symphony". Does this happen at any other university chapel: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Stanford? Oh, maybe at Bob Jones and Oral Roberts, but with a different emphasis. Moreover, on Christmas Eve at 11:00 p.m., if this year is like the previous three, there will be 1700 folk in this Chapel for a service of carols and lessons and prayers. That service is the brain-child of Ben Smith, our noted and beloved choir master. 1700 people -- despite the fact that there are almost no students in residence on Christmas Eve. Add one more statistic: 6,000 at the three renditions of the Messiah. I seem to be the contemporary patron-saint (Junior Varsity) of lost causes in the Chapel. Look, the face of Jesus, in the central panel of the reredos, is still in shadow. I have been asking that it be illuminated ever since I came here in 1945. That is why I know I am the patron saint of lost causes. I am going to make one more suggestion. Since J. B. Duke thought the Chapel to be so essentially central in the University, why does he stand with his back to it? I suggest that the statue be moved to the green sward between Allen Building and Cleland House. When he has gazed at the Chapel to his heart's content, he can turn a wary eye on the second floor of Allen Building or, a delighted, and approving eye on the lassies, the Scotties, of Cleland House. You know, it may come to pass, but I shall probably be dead before it is done.
So, substituting for Dr. Bosley, I have tried on behalf of you in this gathered community to express our thanks for what James Buchanan Duke has done for so many people, especially for our University. He believed in the motto of Trinity College; he kept it for the University. He wanted Eruditio et Religio, learning and reverence, to go hand in hand, neither one without the other. So let it be. Let us pray: For him and to Thee, we say: "Thank you". Amen.
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