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| “The Hill Winds Know Their Name,” by sculptor Dimitri Gerakaris ’69 honors “all the men and women of Dartmouth who have served their country in war and peace.” It was unveiled Friday night during the rededication of Memorial Field where plaques from around the Dartmouth campus now grace the walls. |
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| President Wright addresses the guests. (Click this and other photos to enlarge.) |
Dartmouth President Emeritus James Wright gave a moving speech at the rededication of Memorial Field, calling it a "living memorial," with the proviso that, "If it remains a living memorial, it also bears the burden of reminding us of those whose lives ended too early."
Wright invited the gathering to, "Walk around and look at some of these names. I counted 455 of them from four wars remembered in this facility. Each of these names has a story to be told. Each one of these names was once a student who walked these pathways, a student who experienced this place and planned the lives and dreamed the dreams that all Dartmouth students planned and dreamed."
Wright told of Richard Hall, a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan and a member of the Class of 1915 who drove an ambulance for the American Field Service in France and was killed by a German shell on Christmas morning in 1915. He had planned to be an academic, Wright said, and in his final letter home asked his mother to light a big fire in the family fireplace for him.
Wright spoke of Stubby Pearson, a member of the class of 1942 from Minnesota who was captain of both the football and basketball teams, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. At graduation Pearson told the gathering to not feel sorry for his generation because it must work to end the war and make the world a better place. A Navy pilot, he died in 1944 when his plane was shot down and never had a chance to become the teacher he dreamed of being.
Duncan Sleigh '67 of Marblehead, Mass., was a Latin major who loved cars and told friends he wanted to open a bar and restaurant in Boston when he returned home. His platoon was ambushed crossing a field, Wright said, and while shielding an injured young Marine with his body he was mortally wounded on Nov. 6, 1968, exactly 47 years to the day before the rededication of Memorial Field.
Wright wrapped up his remarks by recalling an address he gave on Veterans day in 2009 at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
"I said casualties of war cry out to be known as persons, not as abstractions called casualties, nor as numbers entered into the books, and not only as names chiseled into marble or granite.
"We need to ensure that here, in this place of memory, lives as well as names are recorded. Lives of smiling human faces, remarkable accomplishments, engaging personalities and each with dreams to pursue. We do this for them, we do this for history, and we do this for those in the future who will send the young to war."
From a Dartmouth release:
Completed in 1923, Dartmouth’s Memorial Field was built as a tribute to the 112 alumni who died in World War I, which ended just five years earlier. It wasn’t only the peers of the alumni who wanted to honor the fallen in World War I—it was also their predecessors, including 47 veterans of the Civil War who installed a special plaque. In the publication The Hill Winds Know Their Name, Charles T. Wood wrote: “Dartmouth had no better way to honor its dead than by building Memorial Field, a stadium looking proudly but sadly to the past even as the nature of its athletic function also allowed the College to look expectantly forward, to better times to come.”
