It must be a condition common to our species that having arrived at a certain age we have a tendency to look back down the path we have come and regard "our" time as the best of times, our valleys the greenest, our heroes the noblest. We surely had it right "then," and the younger generation now experiencing their time in the sun just as surely have it wrong. We shake our heads sadly and say, "In my day, we weren't allowed to act like that! What is the world coming to?" We ask in agreement with the song about disillusionment and past heroes: "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you--- What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson? Joltin' Joe has left and gone away... hey, hey, hey."

I'm just as guilty as the next in these thoughts. I often am quite sure that we really did have it right then, and everywhere I turn today is disorder, diffidence, or its antithesis, defiance. These feelings are especially acute when, within the microcosm of student life presented by the library in which I work, I witness willful destruction of property, calculated disregard of protective rules, and disdain for any kind of "authority." Those few who wreak havoc narrow my perception, and I tend to think of them as representative of the whole passel of young people who swarm on the TCU campus nine months of the year.

I'm guilty, too, of thinking the modern world is devoid of heroes, that there really are no more men and women to emulate, and that hero-hunting and discovery have also left and gone away. But just when I am pretty well-convinced that the world, full of benighted heathens, is going to hell in a handbasket, just when I am certain that there are no more nonpareils like the ones I knew, something comes along to remind me that that isn't so at all. Something comes along to pull me away from such puerile pessimism and restore my faltering faith.

The annual TCU dinner honoring scholarship donors and recipients is one such something. It is an event sponsored by the university each spring, during which those of us contributing to named scholarships have the opportunity to meet the students whose education is partially funded by them. It is a chance, too, for the students to meet their benefactors, thus raising the gift from a cold named number to a value warmed by the giver and the act of giving. The evening's program usually includes speeches by high-ranking seniors about why they chose TCU, what their experience has been, and what the scholarship they hold has meant to them. Occasionally, there is an address by a donor, as well.

This past spring's affair was an especially meaningful one for me. It was a night full of recognition of dreams and dreams fulfilled, of worthies past and present. The keynote speaker was Bob Wright, a nephew of L. C. "Pete" Wright, long-time Business Manager of the university and a venerated name in TCU history.

To me, to many, and to Bob and Mary Wright, "Mr. Pete" was a hero, quietly living an exemplary life and quietly spreading his beneficence out over those in need, helping them fulfill dreams of a college education. In honor of this wise and good man, Bob and Mary Wright have endowed a business scholarship.

In attendance at the dinner also were the two young men who held science scholarships established in my father's name. Keith Louden was twice holder of the Willis G. Hewatt Science Scholarship, made possible with monies donated jointly by my father and Dr. May Owen during their lifetimes, and supported now by my mother. The other student, Bryan Cannon, was a two-time recipient of the Hewatt-Rankin Scholarship, given to TCU by a former student of my father's, "Tex" Rankin (contemporaries will remember him as "Dub"). Bryan was one of the students to address the assemblage that evening. Both Keith and Bryan, campus leaders as well as scholars, would restore even the most hardened cynic's faith in the young.

But there too, and by great good fortune seated next to me, was bright and pretty senior honors student, Julie Parker. It was Julie who found the weakened chord of hope in me and strengthened it. It was Julie who reminded me that green valleys of wonder are still sought and found. And it was Julie who assured me that heroes still roam at large in the land, for, as it turned out, she has some. She spoke glowingly of her English professor, Dr. Bob Frye, who takes an inordinate amount of time to instruct and explain, and whose careful attention to her work seems to her extraordinary. She is amazed and inspired by Dr. Jim Corder, who knows how to draw an accurate map of the world -- "just free-hand!" -- on the blackboard, and impart from his deep well of knowledge where and how, perhaps, we came by the language we use but imperfectly.

As we talked, I was reminded that a college campus abounds with possibilities for heroes, young and old, brash and mild, DiMaggios and "men of letters." The latter is one of six classes of heroes defined by the nineteenth century writer, Thomas Carlyle, in his On Heroes and Hero Worship. The men and women of letters are heroic because they enlighten, he said. They are "light-fountains," who just by being near, one stands to profit. And it occurred to me that this was the brand of hero that Julie was speaking of and that I remembered so well -- teachers who can make the common uncommon, teachers whose seemingly small and generally unsung acts can lead the way out of the dim glow at the periphery into the bright light at the center.

I recalled those in whose light I had stood. I thought of the host of "best teachers I ever had," and recognized what Julie was saying. I recalled, especially, a Dr. Paul Wassenich who, smack in the middle of his lecture on comparative religions stopped and exclaimed, "Oh, it's a wonderful time to be alive and to be able to think!" I remember the light that flashed out with that statement over his young listeners, and I remember wanting to stand and shout, as the anthropologist-essayist Loren Eiseley did when caught up in the moment of throwing stranded, dying starfish back into the life-giving sea, "Yes! That's it, that's it!"

Between that spring dinner and this October afternoon, a child called Asher has been born. I hope that what I now suspect to be true will still be true when that little grandson and his generation arrive to the full awareness of their "times." He will, no doubt, seek heroes, may, in fact, become one. I hope that he will discover light-fountains in whose waters he may wash, just as Julie and I discovered ours. May your way be bright, the hero hunt be bountiful, and the best of times be yours, Asher, my little love.

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