Faith, Friendship, and Imagination at Homecoming 2019
On October 25-26, alumni of The King’s College and Northeastern Bible College reconnected with one another and with the College at Homecoming 2019: "80 Years Established, 20 Years Renewed.”
On October 25-26, alumni of The King’s College and Northeastern Bible College reconnected with one another and with the College at Homecoming 2019: “80 Years Established, 20 Years Renewed.” The festivities kicked off with a Friday night reception in the O’Keeffe Student Union including plentiful refreshments, a table of King’s Gear, and a photo booth. This was followed by the choice of a Met tour with Dr. Henry Bleattler or a Broadway Show, To Kill A Mockingbird. Alumni from the class of 1967 to the class of 2019 were represented, with a sizeable contingent of 2009 graduates celebrating their ten-year anniversary.
On Saturday, alumni began the morning with informal conversations over breakfast followed by President Tim Gibson and his wife, Nancy, presenting their testimony. Student musicians then led a time of worship, which closed with Albert Hay Malotte’s musical setting of The Lord’s Prayer. In the ’70s and early ’80s at Briarcliff Manor, students would sing this hymn every Friday after Dr. Robert Cook led chapel.
WATCH: Alumni award presentations, Dr. Joseph Loconte’s keynote address, and President Tim and Nancy Gibson’s testimony.
The next event of the day was a choice of two faculty-led discussions. One group of alumni followed Dr. Tubbs, associate professor of politics in a conversation on “Are the Constitution and Supreme Court Losing Their Legitimacy?” The second group discussed “What Shaped Your Calling?” with Prof. Dawn Fotopulos, professor of business. Finally, the alumni met in the City Room for a hearty lunch. Sarah Keenan, Alumni Association Executive Committee president, introduced the 2019 alumni awards. (Read full bios of each alumni award winner.)
Dr. Diana (Dahlin) Weber (’67) received the Alumna of the Year Award. Dr. Weber shared her insights after reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s short story, “Leaf by Niggle.” As an artist herself, Weber expressed her longing for the perfection of all things. The recipient of the J. Stanley Oakes Award was Gerta (Yzieraj) Hagen (’06), and Prof. Dawn Fotopulos introduced the award, speaking of Hagen’s resilience as a student who came to King’s from Albania and eventually mastered English and her business studies.
Since Hagen was unable to attend Homecoming, she sent a recorded video of her acceptance remarks, and her sister Erisa (Yzeiraj) Pereira (’10) accepted the award in person on Hagen’s behalf. Finally, Dean of Students David Leedy presented the Distinguished Service Award to Brian Bell (’90). Bell spoke about the privilege of experiencing King’s as a student in the ’80s, a resurrectionist in the late ’90s, and now a father to a current student. (When Leedy presented Bell’s award, he also returned Bell’s original King’s diploma, which Bell used to display on his desk when he worked at the College nearly twenty years ago. Bell had accidentally left the diploma behind when he switched places of employment, and Leedy only recently unearthed it.)
President Gibson then introduced Dr. Joseph Loconte, who closed the afternoon with his keynote address, “War, Friendship, and Imagination.” Dr. Loconte, newly minted Senior Fellow in Christianity and Culture at King’s and an associate professor of history, spoke on the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien restoring the concepts of heroism, virtue, and faith in an age of moral and spiritual darkness.
In the Q&A, Loconte explained that despite the abundance of books on the friendship of Tolkien and Lewis, few adequately attended to the historical context which made their writings so remarkable. This prompted him to write A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War, a historically robust account of Tolkien and Lewis’s life and influence.
Loconte opened with an account of the bloodiest day in British military history: the 1916 Battle of the Somme, of which Tolkien was a lucky survivor. In these brutal war trenches, Tolkien began writing the early mythology of Middle-earth. C.S. Lewis also found himself in combat, being stationed on the western front in November of 1917. Lewis hated war, writing on the horrific site of “horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles.”
Both Tolkien and Lewis survived the horrors of the Great War, eventually going on to teach English literature at Oxford University. In 1926, the men met. According to Loconte, the friendship between Tolkien and Lewis ranks as one of the most consequential relationships in the twentieth century. When both men expressed their deep dissatisfaction with the works of fiction being produced in the post-war years, Lewis said: “If they won’t write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves.”
Lewis and Tolkien’s writings, some of the most influential of the century, emerged at a time when Europe was striped and weary from World War I. The mental and moral outlook of European society had been violently disfigured. The two authors sought to retrieve the epic hero for the modern world, and a central theme in their novels was that of “Courage in ‘quite small people.’” Loconte discussed the unlikely heroes in the stories—Frodo, a little Hobbit, and Lucy, a little girl—ordinary heroes on impossible quests. Through their writings, Tolkien and Lewis offered hope for their bleeding mother nation: the belief that the great, ultimate war will eventually be won and that one day, the King will return.
After Loconte’s address, Sarah Keenan offered short remarks thanking the alumni for their presence. Saturday afternoon concluded with merry conversations over coffee and dessert as alumni—themselves schooled in hardy faith, friendship, and imagination through their time at The King’s College—reflected on the themes in Loconte’s lecture.
