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Page 9 text:
“
BIE SIP We AMOUR IGE I We, who are the voice of the OLD TOWN CRIER, wish you to look back- ward with us for a moment at the life of Eugene Kent McNew, not to review any dates, however important or significent, but to recall the little things that only we, who knew him so long and so well, can know. These little things we want to remember always, for in them we read the kind of man he was, the kind of man to whom we gave our love, our loyalty, and our admiration; truly, a man among men. If we are frankly a little sentimental, we hope you will forgive us and re- member that it is only we who are sentimental and never Mr. McNew, who dis- liked all forms of sentimentality. Old Town School was his very own. It became his when he became its principal twenty years ago, and his love for it never faltered and his loyalty never failed. He loved every brick in its walls. He loved the stunted old apple tree that grew in a sunny corner of its courtyard so much that he could not bring himself to have it cut down — remember? He loved the view from the west windows, and the maple trees that are so flamboyant in their autumn dress. Every spring the same mocking bird came back, year after year, as the swallows return to Capistrano, to perch upon the large shrub just outside the office window, to perch and to sing as only a mocking bird in the springtime can sing. Mr. McNew would pause a moment in his work, or halt his words in mid- sentence to listen. Once while a faculty meeting was in progress, the bird sang with such gusto that Mr. McNew turned toward it and with mock sternness said, “Will you kindly go away and let me talk awhile.” Silently the bird transferred himself to a different twig — and sang louder than before. The shrub is gone, and the mocking bird did not come back this spring. Perhaps it sings somewhere else to its favorite audience and wakens again the old listening look and the whimsical smile. Mr. McNew loved all childhood, but in particular, he loved every child who came to Old Town School. He knew them all, and none in leaving ever went so far, or climbed so high, or sank so low as to be beyond the reach of his interest and his embracing affection. He wanted to give all our boys and girls his own intellectual curiosity, his eternal seeking after truth and beauty. No man ever pursued learning more tirelessly, or with greater diligence. He sougnt no empty, meaningless degrees, but loved learning for its own sake. He looked for it and found it everywhere, transmuting it from the superficial into true wisdom. On tne very day that Mr. McNew left school for the last time, a former college professor called at the office and talked for longer than the usual time. After he left, he.said of Mr. McNew, “His influence will live forever. Who knows what fruit it will bear a hundred, or a thousand years from now.” Who, indeed, knows when, or where, upon the ever upward-winding stairs of the ages, his influence will reach out to lives and generations yet un- creamed of. When senior literature classes at Old Town in recent years have studied Chaucer and have first met the Oxford Scholar, their reaction has invariably been the same. After reading the lines — “He seldom spoke; but what he said was clear, And of sense, so that you wished to hear; Of high ideals and virtue was his speech; And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.” the response has always been prompt and sure, “That describes Mr. McNew.” Last year we quoted the last line in our dedication of the OLD TOWN CRIER
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Page 10 text:
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to him. Never were the words used more appropriately. Here was a man to whom honor was dearer than all other things, even life itself, and he was proudly careful to put no blemish upon a stainless page. Let no man dare to dream that it was ever otherwise. We are persuaded that, from his duty and from his pledged word, no ambition, no pleasure, no desire — nothing — could ever move him. He learned in bitterness that the race is not always to the swift, nor the victory to the strong, nor yet honor to the honorable. He had, however, no time, ever, for recriminations or fault-finding, no capacity for bearing a grudge, and no taste for self-pity. He was, withal, a happy man, finding life good, and bringing to it a zest for living and for enjoying simple things. His humor sparkled tirelessly, its irony always kindly toward MAN, but barbed and biting when turned upon man’s mistakes of government and lead- ership, his worst foibles, and his amazing stupidity in directing world affairs. Mr. McNew’s personal philosophy underlay the following expression of the philosophy he formulated for his school: “We emphasize clear insight in the art of matching cause and effect and caution our students against accepting the academic statements of those whose positions might lend weight to their utterances. We would have our students pay adequate respect where respect is due, but eschew subservience and appeasement. We entertain the hope that our boys and girls may be model American citizens.” One of his favorite bits of literature was the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He kept a small copy of it near him and read from it frequently. Do you re- member how often he quoted from it, especially the lines, “Ah, take the cash and let the credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum’’? There was another book he kept beside him and read from frequently — the Bible. The copy he bought the year he came to Old Town is worn and shabby now. He marked favorite passages and referred to them often. As we think of Mr. McNew, these lines about the gracious Duncan come back to us: “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further.” Yes, the tired, frail body, worn out in our service, sleeps well, and long; but the soul wakes, surely, upon some flaming sunrise.
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