Dr. Thomas Tredway's 1975 inaugural address
(Editor's note: Dr. Thomas Tredway's 1975 inaugural address was published in Augustana College Magazine, Winter 2003, on the occasion of his retirement.)
A quiet shaded grove
Dr. Thomas Tredway was installed as Augustana’s seventh president in an outdoor ceremony in October 1975. After being introduced by Judge John Telleen, chair of the board of directors, he offered what has to be one of the shortest inaugural addresses in the college’s history.
Cardinal Newman reminds us that when the ancient Athenians began the world’s first university, they sought a quiet shaded grove with a steam flowing through. To think carefully and clearly, they believed one must be in pleasant, tranquil surroundings. Shaded lawns were ideal for reason and reflection.
This lawn has seen its share of Frisbees and touch football. But I suppose that what the trees and bricks around us know best are students and faculty hurrying to class in Old Main or Wallberg or Founders Hall. As lovely as college campuses like this one may be, especially in the fall, it is the men and women who populate them who give them their true meaning. When persons of intelligence and honesty and discipline are committed to learning and teaching, lawns have a way of turning green and oaks of turning red and yellow around them.
The people who come and go here are the truest loveliness of the place: students, janitors, administrators, secretaries and teachers. There are people, too, not always here, who deepen the colors of the campus.
Parents, who after they have unloaded their children and their trunks at the dormitories, drink coffee and nervously meet the faculty on the Union lawn each fall.
Alumni, who cross the sidewalks caught in memory, hearing voices in their minds, which they thought they had forgotten.
Neighbors, who bring their out-of-town company to look around the campus when the redbuds blossom.
Today one thinks especially of people who will never come here again. They built this school because they believed that immigrants were as ready as anybody to seek liberal learning. They held that higher education belonged in the midst of the Christian Church, in America as surely as it had for a thousand years in Europe.
And we must think of the people who are happy because it is Saturday, and they are free from grade school for the weekend. They will come here after some of us are gone, to study and play, to worship and grow.
Mr. Telleen, I am pleased to assume the responsibilities now assigned to me. To be one of the people who belong to Augustana is a source of happiness and gratitude to me. I promise to do the best I can.