Merrimack College - Merrimackan Yearbook (North Andover, MA)

Page 13 text:

IN THE New Hampshire summer stillness “the lengthening shadows wait . . for autumn’s deft, brisk touch of full-colored glory. A LONELY BROOK murmurs low, half-hidden in snow, and the frozen song of the wind hallos down a Vermont valley. . . . ALONG THE CHARLES, a favorite jaunting place for New England’s proper Bostonians.

Page 12 text:

... A SEA-FARING MAN of Marblehead has no need for mansion huge or porticoed palace. But notice that he proudly boasts membership in the local Chamber of Commerce. ANNE BRADSTREET’S house is one of the many historic places in the immediate vicinity of the college campus. A poet once said that New England soil was too bar- ren to grow anything — so it produced men. It is true the land is poor, rocky, hilly, wornout even before the early English settlers wore it out further. But this land that tries men’s souls” has made these souls most fit to receive the inner life of beauty. Robert Frost could not grow enough food on his New Hampshire farm to feed his family, but he found there enough poetic nourishment to supply a nation. Our scenery is not spectacular. The quiet charm of wandering valley streams, the craggy ruggedness of rocks and rills are not conducive to heroic dreams. Rather, here is an invitation to contemplate the smaller works of God, to notice the unnoticed, to peer down- ward and inward. Nor is this a confession of inferior- ity, for here They love their land because it is their own. And scorn to give aught other reason why. NEW ENGLANDERS turn many a fond, commercial eye to the past, and antiques form an imp ortant com- merce for some of its inhabitants.

Page 14 text:

This is the story of a school in its relations with a community — a record of corporate enterprise and achievement. Even more than this it is the chronicle of a faith and a vision, or rather of many faiths and many visions, inspired by the need for a regional insti- tution of higher learning to build a better community, a better America. The story begins, as so many modern reforms and projects begin, in the isolated deliberations of a dis- cussion group. In 1946 a special panel on educational affairs set up by a Haverhill labor-management com- mittee under the direction of J. Leo Cronin recom- mended construction in the Merrimack Valley of a college designed to serve the immediate needs of re- turning veterans, and to provide future generations with effective tools for intellectual, physical, and moral development. The Most Reverend Richard J. Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, enthusiastically patronized the project, securing the Augustinian Fathers to found and staff the proposed institution, and launching what was to culminate into a million dollar drive. Founding a new college is in itself a monumental task. Founding a new college in times of uncertainty and of inflationary spirals is a calculated risk. It re- quires courage, leadership, and determination. From the initial planning stage to the present day the one man most closely identified with the project has ex- hibited these qualities. To the persistent energy and unfaltering devotion of the Very Reverend Vincent A. McQuade, O.S.A., Ph.D., is due in large measure the success of so precarious an enterprise.