Concordia College - Spire / Concordian Yearbook (Fort Wayne, IN)

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Professor L. W. Dorn

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Dedicatory T HE Class of 1919 dedicates diis volume to Professor Louis Dorn as a token of love and gratitude. A prophet is not wilhuiit honor except in his own country. As a rule, a man is not estimatetl at his proper wortli by his contemporaries. And the work of a teacher is not appreciated by the average student until long after the relation of teacher and pupil is ended. To this indictment — and an indictment it is — we, the Class of 1919, plead guilty. What time he was with us, setting tasks, giving examinations. demanding themes and essays, the greater number of us looked upon him very much as undergraduates generally look upon a teacher. He was to us one of those hostile forces, that the course of human events has placed between us and a diploma, as a lion in the path toward graduation. This hostile force we hail to meet in a fair encounter. And right glad we were too. if we came out of tlie encounter unscathed. ' Tis true we did occasionally see that a teacher is more than a hostile force, a stem taskmaster exacting toll and tribute to the uttermost fartliing. And particularly of Professor Dorn. even tlie most unappreciative of us felt that he was a kind and loving friend, rather than a taskmaster. Even he who lacked most in penetration realized that Professor Dom was a big, manly man, who devoted the full strength of a great soul to the ungrateful task of leading us upward and onward. Indeed, leading us, not driving us, hut leading us. gently but firmly, along the path we were to go. Yet. in spite of all this, who can say that he ever realized how ileep he was in Professor Dorn s debt? In those days when the news gradually spread among us that he would never teach us again, that ere long his sickbed would become his deathbed, in those days when we heard that, amid great bodilv suffering, he was slowly but surely succumbing to the power

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of the Reaper whose name is Death — in those days many of us. yea all of us, said to ourselves. Not until now did we realize the greatness of our loss. In speaking of our loss, we are not thinking of the loss of the ehurch, inasmuch as a great theologian, an aeiurate thinker, a gifted pulpit orator has passed away. Nor are we thinking ot the loss to the city of Ft. Wayne, inasmuch as one of its most truly public spirited men is no more. No, we are thinking most specifically of our own loss, inasmuch as we lost a teacher and leader. As we think back over the years that have passed we realize that he was to us a teacher in the truest and most ultimate sense of the word. We know that he sought to awaken and did awaken in us the powers of our slumbering souls; that he taught us not so much by his instruction as by his personality; that he was wont to stand before us in the classroom as a man fourscpiare, without a flaw who was doing the work of bis calling with a high earnest- ness and an exalted joyfulness, as die bearer of a sacred fire which he would fain transfer into our souls in order that we migiit be enabled to go out into the world, whereever it might please God to place us, and do our work as men of fullgrown stature — even as he did his. And in this sense may he remain our taskmaster ever! May we do the work of our calling in life in die spirit in which he taught us to do our work here at Concordia! W. M.