ADDRESS
GIVEN AT ASSEMBLY AT CHURCH COLLEGE OF HAWAII
Earl C.
Crockett
December 15, 1964
1.
Pleasure in being on the Islands and at the Church College
of Hawaii
2. Economist
background:
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address - 266 words
Ten Commandments
- 197 words
Declaration of Independence
- 300 words
OPA Order fixing price of cabbages
during 2nd World War - 26,911 words
Takes longer for economist to create
proper confusion
Woman who tried to follow a tip in newspaper:
"Lettuce won’t turn brown
if you put your head in a plastic bag before placing it in a refrigerator.
"
Actually not served as economist for eight years:
(a) Academic Vice President at B. Y.
U.
(b) Acting President - one year.
Advice: Salaries for professors
Parking space for students’ automobiles
Winning football teams for Alumni.
Years ago when I began teaching in college,
it was difficult for me to realize that entering freshmen at that
time could not remember much first hand about the First World War.
Thus, I had to modify my classes accordingly. A still later generation of students knew nothing except the great
depression of the 30ts and the long administration of Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
Now I am brought up with a start as
I realize you students know nothing directly either of the great
depression or of the Second World War and scarcely anything of the
Korean War. You were only
seven or eight years old when the latter conflict ended, and you
weren’t even born before the Pearl Harbor attack. You never heard one of Franklin D. Roosevelt
‘s soothing fireside chats nor did you hear Hitler rave and
rant over the radio. Your
entire lives have been spent in the post-Hiroshima age; moreover,
in an era of relatively high prosperity.
Therefore, you have had no experience with living in a nation
having mass unemployment and deep depression.
You probably can’t even remember when rocket missiles
or jet planes were first invented, although you have been observing
their developments in this the space age. You have no recollection of a time when there
was no television, or penicillin or sulfa drugs or electronic computers
or garbage disposals for the kitchen sink.
It is true that you became teenagers by the time of the first
sputnik and the first rocket to reach the moon.
This recollection you will be able to narrate to your children
and grandchildren. Within
our church, the only president you can really remember is David
O. McKay, for he became president before you were baptized at the
age of eight.
A point I am trying to make is that
as you leave college you will face a world very, very different
from that which your fathers and mothers faced when they graduated,
if they even attended college. As for your grandparents, when they were teenagers,
they might almost as well have been back in the middle ages!
Is today a good time for you to be a
teenager nearly old enough to have legal maturity yet with a life
expectancy of more than fifty years ahead of you?
Would it have been better for you to live in some golden
age of the past when problems were simpler and manners of living
less complex? Apparently there are some who think so.
They are the ones who take a pessimistic attitude regarding
this sorry old world and its chances for the future.
Here is a quotation from a newspaper which reflects this
point of view:
"Today conditions appear to be
particularly hazardous and fraught with danger.
If the world becomes plunged into another general war, there
will be catastrophe. Implements
of destruction recently invented are so terrible that past wars,
even though dreadful, might in comparison be considered mild.
The outlook for the future is so dismal we are tempted to
say that parents bringing new babies into the world are actually
foolhardy. Reason tells us that we can have no optimism or faith in the future.”
Did you pay particular attention to
those dismal forebodings? Does
the quotation have a familiar ring?
Well, I have a surprise for you – what I just read appeared
in a Baltimore, Maryland, newspaper 100 years ago at the outbreak
of the Civil War.
It can serve as a les son for all of
us. At few times throughout the history of mankind
has there been complete peace in the world. We are always subject to strife and struggle, conflict
and dissension.
There have usually been reasons why
each generation could argue that its fears and anxieties, dangers
and problems were almost insurmountable and obviously more difficult
than those of their parents, grandparents or any preceding generation.
Thus it is easy to become despondent; to think that there
is little hope for the future because of dangers besetting our lives
and those of our loved ones. But
this we must not do! How fortunate for us that our forebears did
not follow the admonition of the Editor of the Baltimore newspaper
who cautioned that we should have no more children because of the
sorry plight ahead. Actually,
the last 100 years have been good years.
Think of what has happened in our church alone during that
time. It has grown from
a few thousand members to over two million with missions and stakes
rapidly spreading over the entire world.
Yes, it’s a good time to be alive
and to be young. What are the special blessings we enjoy in
this day and age, and take for granted?
Without much discussion, I’ll mention only a few--all
of them, however, important.
First, in our country especially, we
have individual freedom. This
is a priceless possession, which we do not fully appreciate unless
we lose it. Freedom has many aspects ranging all the way
from having an opportunity to say and write what we really think,
to the right to ownership of our homes, business enterprises, and
the free choice of an occupation or profession. Also and fundamental
is the right to worship God as we please.
Without individual freedom, we cannot fully exercise the
free agency, which God intended in placing us here on earth.
Yet throughout the history of man, individual freedom has
seldom been enjoyed as fully as in America in our generation.
A second blessing you young people enjoy
whether you realize it or not, is relative peace throughout the
world. It is true that world tensions exist and that current crises, for
example at Viet Nam and in Africa, could thrust us again into war,
but currently at least we are not waging much of a shooting war. Do you realize that on an average, each generation
of each nation in past-recorded history has experienced a minimum
of one major war? Let us
hope and pray that during the remainder of your lives a major war
can be avoided.
A third blessing of your generation
is almost unlimited opportunities for education.
Literacy is high in our country today.
A larger proportion of the youth of the nation are attending
high schools and graduating than ever before.
Also, a larger percentage are attending college although
the proportion is much less than for those in high school.
We are very proud of the progress being made in Hawaii from
the viewpoint of educational programs and participation therein
by our young people.
Another advantage we enjoy, especially
in the United States, is a very high standard of living. If we are
interested in material things – necessities, comforts and luxuries,
they are all around us today. Most of you students have never known anything
else. You are enjoying more
material blessings than were available even to the kings and potentates
of earlier eras. If you
don't believe this, look into the kitchens, the bathrooms and carriage
houses of the medieval castles of Europe.
They contained no central heating or plumbing, no electricity,
no automobiles or refrigerators or radios or record players or T.V.
sets.
Perhaps there is danger that our material
blessings may turn us away from spiritual things.
Let’s heed the admonitions contained in the Book of
Mormon from this viewpoint. Time and again among the Nephites, prosperity
turned the people away from righteousness.
We should remember the quotation:
“The love of money is the root of all evil.”
It’s not the money itself, which is to blame, but the
lustfulness, the craftiness, the selfishness and the jealousies,
which may arise in the hearts of men and women because of an over-emphasis
upon the material things of life.
Nevertheless, our high standard of living
as measured by wealth and income, goods and services, if used wisely
and for the benefit of humanity, is definitely a blessing to us.
Another blessing you students may count
on is long life with relatively good health.
During our century alone, the average length of life has
nearly doubled, while modern medical care has reduced considerably
the frequency and seriousness of illnesses.
What a blessing good health and long life is and can be –
especially if the long life is an active, useful and happy one.
Do you fully realize that being eighteen or nineteen years
of age today your average remaining lifetime, if you are a boy,
is 54 years; if a girl, 59 years? Thus, having survived infancy and childhood,
you fellows on the average will live to be 70 and you girls will
average 75 before you die. This
being the case, why not spend a few more years preparing by remaining
in college until graduation? Even
two or 2 ½ years in a full time mission is not long in comparison
with a lifetime.
A final advantage I shall mention which
we possess in this day and age is the possibility of membership
in the restored Church of Jesus Christ.
What a privilege and blessing this is!
On a strictly mathematical basis, do you know what the chances
are that you would have been born in the Church or converted to
the Gospel during your lifetime? Think of the vast number of people in previous
generations who lived and died without this privilege in mortal
life! A great blessing indeed
is the Mormon heritage, which you enjoy.
Shall we assume then that this is a
good time for a teenager to be alive and that Hawaii is an excellent
place for him or her to reside?
Suppose we do have a crisis once in a while –
this may be to test us.
Chinese have no word for crisis
– nearest means danger + opportunity.
Place for no problems is cemetery.
I congratulate all of you on being in college. This is a place to learn facts, to learn to
think, to grow mentally and morally, to get ready for becoming leaders
in your respective communities and in the Church.
I trust none of you in later life will
be like the old-timer who complained, “It ain’t my ignorance
that done me up, it’s what I knowed that wasn't so.”
As never before in history, an education
is rapidly becoming a requirement for success and especially for
leadership in many, if not most, of the important economic, political
and social activities of life.
Brigham Young had only eleven
days of formal education in his entire life, yet he was one
of the great pioneering and religious leaders of his generation,
if not of our dispensation. This was possible because Brigham was endowed
with exceptional natural talents and was ordained by our Father
in Heaven to lead his people. Even
so, President Young often admitted his handicap in not possessing
more formal schooling. As
evidence of his realization of the vital importance of education,
even in the past century, Brigham founded two great universities
– the
University of Deseret (now the University of Utah)
and Brigham Young University. Inscribed
on a plaque in the foyer of our Smoot Administration Building at
B.Y.U. are these immortal words of Brigham Young, “Education
is the power to think clearly, to act well in the world's work,
and the power to appreciate life.” And so Brigham really knew what an education
meant, even though he had very little formal education himself. But he was an exceptional person.
Our beloved President McKay has told us:
“True education consists not merely
in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature
or art, but in the development of character.
True education awakens a desire to conserve health by keeping
the body clean and undefiled. True education trains in self-denial and self-mastery.
True education regulates the temper, subdues passion and
makes obedience to social laws and moral order a guiding principle
of life. It develops reason
and inculcates faith in God.”
Remember, it is man’s brain that
gives him his vast advantage over all animals, however superior
they may be in size, strength, speed, claws, instincts and endurance.
Man can analyze and generalize and put ideas into words so
that they may be exchanged, criticized, recorded and transmitted. The experience of individuals is thus incorporated into a rich heritage
of common culture that is the essence of civilization.
It has been said that ordinary persons
have been able to multiply upon the face of the earth and live in
relative health and comfort mainly because of the presence of occasional
exceptional individuals. The main additions to our stock of knowledge,
permitting civilization to advance, have come from uncommon men
and women, those with exceptional ability or exceptional
ambition or both. and of course education always helps them.
All students in the Church School System
are uncommon men and women – at least they are potentially
so. Most of you have a good heritage from your parents. Thus your start in early life has been favorable.
I don’t mean necessarily that your parents have been
blessed with wealth or large income – not at all.
I do mean that each of you has been endowed with a good mind,
you have probably been taught good personal habits and you desired
a college education sufficiently to have prepared yourself for admission
to the college.
In attempting an education is there
a danger of aiming too high? Could
it be that either we students or else our parents may be sacrificing
too much for the sake of two or four years at a college
or university? Tolstoy tells
the story of Pakhom, a Russian peasant.
He (Pakhom) lived on a small farm with his wife and sons. They were contented and happy. They had enough land. Then someone began taunting Pakhom for not
having ambition. He ought
to want more land, they said. Ambition
began to eat away. He sold
his farm, moved east, bought larger acres, worked night and day,
and added more land. The whole family worked from morning to night;
they no longer had time for one another or for their neighbors. Finally, they moved still farther east to the
foothills of the great mountains.
There Pakhom drove a bargain with a wandering tribe of Bashkirs
who owned all this country. For
all the money he had, Pakhom could get all the land that he could
walk or run around from sun-up to sundown.
In his eagerness for land, he set himself too large an enclosure. As the sun reached the horizon and was to set,
he sighted the Bashkirs cheering him on to the finish. Exhausted, his feet like lead, pain making
him almost blind, he pushed on.
As the sun sank, Pakhom, twenty feet from the goal, stumbled
and fell. The blood gushed from his nose and mouth.
The Bashkirs shallowed out a grave, 6 feet long, 3 feet wide
and 3 feet deep, and buried him. And Tolstoy adds, “And that's all the
land that Pakhom really needed.“
So sometimes we pay too high a price
for what we get or try to get and, therefore, our wants and desires
should always be tempered with sound judgment.
This caution is good to keep in mind; however, it is not
usually needed with reference to the desire for education.
Assuming a young man or a young woman possesses ability to
gain from a college education and to perform the required scholastic
work, it is difficult to find many cases where the cost, the effort,
the sacrifice, the struggle for this education is not worthwhile.
I advise you to take your class work
seriously.
In doing this, budget your time and
make each moment of study count.
Perhaps the best student I ever had was Whizzer White, the
all-American quarterback and Rhodes Scholar who is now a member
of the United States Supreme Court. While a student at the University of Colorado, Byron Whizzer White
majored in Pre-Law, taking several courses from me in Economics. He possessed tremendous powers of concentration
and could study effectively even when traveling with his football
colleagues on a train while all other team members were shouting
and laughing at his end of the car.
We each have 24 hours per day. They are given to us free. But
what a perishable commodity is time. To the young, time appears to flow on endlessly with an unlimited
supply of hours and days. If
we lose an hour now there will always be another one tomorrow –
so we think while we are young.
But don’t fool yourself – time for each of us is
truly limited. Make it count
while you are in school. One
successful man once said, “I am what I am because of what I
do when I have nothing to do.”
If you make good use of your time and
have perseverance you can accomplish wonders.
George Reynolds – convert
at age of 14 years. Small of stature – missionary at Hyde
Park. Immigrated to Utah,
1865. Secretary to First Presidency – Brigham
Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith. Member of Council of Seventy. Test case for plural marriage. “A complete concordance of Book of Mormon”
– 21 years or labor
Ernest J. Wilkinson – Describe
Indian cases.
Three rules for success work, work,
work
President Heber J. Grant –
Learning to play baseball, to write and to sing.
That which one persists in doing –
I want to conclude by expressing encouragement
to all of you. Keep busy. Keep active in the Church. Have a constant desire to learn. Read and study and listen to your teachers. Keep the faith. Don’t disappoint your parents.
Don’t disappoint yourself.
Remember you must live with yourself throughout eternity.