AMERICAN FARM SCHOOL
BRUCE LANSDALE MEMORIAL
PART VIII
Introduction
On February 1, 1990 Bruce Lansdale was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Agriculture by the Faculty of Agriculture of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. This is the first part of
THE POWER OF MYTH IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT
BY
Bruce M. Lansdale
INTRODUCTION
I could never find words to express my gratitude to the Faculty of Agriculture for the great honor which they have bestowed upon me in awarding me an honorary Doctorate in Agriculture. Nor could I describe to you how inadequate I feel for a recognition of which I alone am certainly not worthy. As I told Professor Alifakiotis and Professor Ananikas when they told me about the degree, “If you are a normal human being it requires about three or a maximum of four years to obtain a doctorate degree. If you are what they call in Greek a boubounas (baboon) like me, it takes forty years!”
Nobody has been more affected by the metamorphosis of these forty years than my wife, Tad, and I.
We came to teach,
But have ended up learning.
We came to change,
But ended up being changed.
We came to inspire, but others inspired us instead.
We came to bring a new life to the people of rural Greece,
But it is they who have brought a new life to us.
I feel particularly moved to receive a degree from the University of Thessaloniki for two reasons. First, as my brother in America said to me, “You have been judged by the outstanding individuals in the country where you have lived and worked who know what you have accomplished.” For this, I sincerely thank the whole Faculty of Agriculture. Secondly, my arrival in Greece in a basket in 1925 coincided with the founding of this great university. Professor George Sotiriades was one of the early visitors in our home when I was a child. I have fond memories as a little boy of going to select an Aghios Vasilis present for a Greek boy of my age at the request of his daughter, Roxani Sotiriadou. We never received gifts on Aghios Vasilis Day for as Amerikanakia we always celebrated Christmas. What a delightful surprise to wake up on Aghios Vasilis morning and discover on my bed “for a Greek boy” my age. This first set of tools started me working with my hands before I was ten years old!
I do not feel alone standing before you today for truly I am surrounded, as the Apostle Paul says, “by a cloud of witnesses.” Behind me are two generations of Houses – not only the Founder of the School, John Henry House, and his son, Charles, who succeeded him for thirty seven years, but also their wives, Susan Adeline Beers House who arrived in the Balkans 116 years ago and her daughter-in-law, Ann Kellogg House, who died in 1989 at the age of 100. Maybe the words on Mother House’s gravestone best describes the impact of these two women on the Farm School:
Susan Adeline Beers House
Undaunted by the clouds of fear
Undazzled by a happy day
She built a heaven about her here
In addition to the two generations of Houses, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to two generations of Farm School staff. The first generation which brought me up from the time I first arrived at the School as a twenty one year old volunteer, the ones who helped me to understand the meaning of the Farm School myth, and the second which has helped me find new expression and new directions for this myth to adapt to changing times and circumstances in the ever changing character of modern rural Greece.
But there have also been five generations of Lansdales which have had a profound impact on me. About ten years ago I introduced my father top an eighty year old friend in Athens, Denny Papavassilopoulos. To my father’s amazement his first comment was, “I would love to have met your father!” when my father asked “Why?” he responded, “I am very fond of your son, and I have always believed that it takes three generations to create character.” It is for this I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my father’s father and my mother’s mother who instilled in us a commitment of service to our fellow man.
It was both my grandparents and my father who gave me the flame which my mother continually kindled to give it new intensity in my formative years. What a privilege to live near to two such great monuments to my parents which have embraced me over the years. For my father it is the Thessaloniki YMCA which he helped Bishop Genadios and the Board of the YMCA to build during the 1930’s. Whenever I drive or walk past it, I have the pleasure of saying, “Yassou Papou!” my mother’ tomb is even more striking. When she died in1950 in the United Sates at the age of fifty one we reflected on what had meant most to her in her life. It was watching the reflection of the sun on Mount Olympus at dawn and at sunset which inspired us to bring her ashes to Greece and to scatter them over her favorite mountain. At dawn on those rare winter mornings, and during crimson sunsets when we are all in awe of God’s majesty expressed in her mountain, I take a few moments to commune with my mother and sense her presence among us, while reflecting on some words I read in France one time:
“We must worship the altars of our ancestors,
but it is the flames and not the ashes we must remember.”
To my wife, Tad, I owe a deep debt of gratitude for helping me turn my dreams into a reality and for being a mother not only to our four children, but to more than 1500 Farm School boys and girls since 1949. She gave birth to three of our four children in Thessaloniki and they all still debate at great length whether they are more Greek or American. You can imagine our great joy when our only daughter Christine decided not only to become a Greek citizen, but to be baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church which she referred to as “the church in which I grew up!”
We have acquired a new son and daughter in the persons of George and Charlotte Draper who will take over the torch passed down to us by the Houses in July 1989. There is no greater joy for Tad and me than in knowing that the School will continue in such capable hands.
In our children’s children, we see, not only the hope for the world in the twenty first century, but a fifth generation of which at least one has been born in Greece (and another imminently on the way) who will continue to express the love which Tad and I feel for this country which has so embraced us and made us feel that it is our true patrida (motherland). We owe a deep debt of gratitude to another group of our children, not four or forty or four hundred, but many hundreds of graduates spread all over Greece many of whom have been kind enough to come here today to honor us.
They say that the children you adopt have even greater value than your own, for you have chosen them and they have chosen you. “By their fruits you shall know them.” says the Bible. It is these graduates who are the fruits of the Farm School in its eighty five years, and it is them, whom you are honouring through me today.