University of Virginia - Corks and Curls Yearbook (Charlottesville, VA)

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Dr. Luck is the extent to which he is at heart still a boy-that delirious age when our sympathies are the spontaneous outpourings of our sense of what is fair, when our attachments are buoyant, our enthusiasm and capacity for play illimitable, when our ideals are realistic in short, when iievery goose is a swan and every lass a queen. It is thisethe happy and eternal Peter Fan in John Luck, constituting the indefinable something that inHuences and enriches every life he touches, that has endeared him to faculty and student and to all who have been so fortunate as to come within the reaches of his orbit. There is no other theory upon which it can be explained. That he is a BA. COZL an M.A. C03i and a PhD. COBi of the University, a Raven, Phi Beta Kappa and Final President of the Jefferson Literary Society and is now Professor of Mathe- matics, is a tribute to his ability and intellectual ascendancy. But that he should be a Hotfoot, Arcadian, uI. M. R, President of the Academic Class COD of the University and Faculty Member 622i of the 33-3 Council, is the livery not of the mind alone, but of the heart. The most accurate and critical judge of cultural and intellectual values in the world is the college student. By occupation and training, he is peculiarly fitted to appraise these qualities. He alone, en masse, is engaged in the intensive study of them and is focussed upon them. In post college life, we have indeed occasion to pass judgment upon the content and quality thereof that many an individual possesses, but invariably our estimate is biased or measured by ulterior motives or personal considerations-the fitness of one for a particular office coveted by another, or the effect that one's efforts in a given direction have upon our personal interests. The appraisal of the student, how- ever, is molded by no such external or ulterior influences. He appreciates values for their sake aloneean application of the principle of Ars gratia artis. He honors cordiality and sympathy. for example, not for what one may ac- complish for himself by being sympathetic and cordial, but as the indicia of human spontaneity and interest in one's fellows. He honors loyalty not for the personal reward that may inure from standing by another, but for the devotion to friend, institution, ideal or cause, and the quality of idealism, that loyalty betokens. He honors intellect, in conjunction with other human qualv I91

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To fohn lennings Luck Professor of Mathematics In appreciation Of his service and loyalty to the University, Of the exemplihcation of its traditions and ideals that his way of life embodies, Of his ability, his character and his interest in the ahairs of student life, Of the soundness of his counsel and the ever-hearten- ing gentleness and cordiality that is accorded all who appeal to him for assistance or advice, This forty-fourth volume of CORKS and CURLS is afectionately dedicated

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ities, not for the material enrichment that superior intellect may confer upon its possessor, but as the fulfillment of the full stature of man. And so with John Luck. It is not the excellence alone of his professional work and the opportunities thereby created for personal advancement in his chosen career that have won for him the admiration and affection of the student body, but the fact that in all of his relations with them and in all of the various offices in which he has represented them or their beloved Alma Mater, he will never permit expediency, advantage, or the aggravations of the moment to abate his allegiance to his ideals or his conception of right-at whatever cost. He is not ua pipe to F ortuneis linger to sound what stop she pleases. Always he ufollows the gleam. They know him as a trusted Hguide, philosopher and friend. But more than thatethey find in him demon- stration of the fact that a man can achieve professional and material success without stifling or subordinating those cultural qualities that not only so much enhance one's joie de vivre. but enable one to speak understandingly the language of every manner of man. Indeed. he illustrates that the full flower of one's development is never attained if these qualities are neglected. Of those who have sat with him into the Witching hours of night reading some poem or listening to music, who is there to whom he has not imparted the stimulation that he experiences therefrom and to whom the realization has not occurred that without the capacity to enjoy such things, the full harvest of mature manhood has not been gathered? Who golfs with him that has not felt the zest that good sportsmanship infuses? What adventure or company has not been regaled by his fund of stories and unfailing sense of humor? Who has come to him for counsel that has not gone away lighter at heart? It is these qualities that the student venerates and to which he brings, with admiration and affection and with Godspeed for the years ahead, the tribute of the dedication of this Annual. I could not give you any Godlier thing if I were king. -W. W. C. I91