The 2020 Commencement Address I Wish They Had Given
Our business is to win the war. Begin now. Those were the parting words of the man who stood on this very spot 102 years ago. It was 1918 on the eve of the 92 nd commencement exercises. In front of Northam Towers was the largest crowd ever assembled in the history of the College. 5,000 people hung on every word from the 26 th president of the United States. One of his last speeches, it lasted over an hour. And just six months later, he would be gone. There had been Roosevelts at Trinity, but Colonel Roosevelt (he preferred “Colonel Roosevelt” to “President Roosevelt”) was there at the behest of his friend, President Flavel Luther. Later that year, those brass letters in front of Northam that are so familiar to us all were embedded in the Long Walk to memorialize that very special moment in history and the Biblical passage read in his address. Consider what that morning looked like. It was 11 o’clock on a beautiful, cloudless Sunday. A large dark blue banner with