Joe Hickman ’74 P’00,’02,’05,’07 delivered this chapel talk at the Founders Day chapel service on Wednesday, Dec. 4.
Thank you, Joy, very much for that very thoughtful and humbling introduction. First, I need to make a confession. I went to St. Andrew’s from 1970 to ’74, and I never attended Sunday chapel. And I never got marks for that absence.
Usually about 10 young men from St. Andrew’s took a van to Old St. Joe’s Catholic Chapel on West Cochran Street in Middletown every Sunday morning. The service there had something special that we could not get in this chapel. Now, it wasn't spiritual. St. Andrew’s had great liturgies, thoughtful homilists, much better choir, even better organists. But there was something more that the young men of St. Andrew’s were longing for and could not find in this chapel at that time. And that was girls.
So now it’s apparent I’ve never done a chapel talk before. I was told by my trusted advisor—my wife, Marianne—that my talk needed a theme, and it should be personalized without being boring, and mostly, make it short. Based on Ms. McGrath’s introduction, you could think I will talk about soil health, water quality, carbon sequestration, pollinator habitat. That’s all good stuff. Very personal to me, but it wouldn’t be short for you. I thought of various themes that would relate to this assembly. Likely some have been used before for themes of talks: carpe diem; Saints and Sinners; what would Jesus do with a cell phone? And then I found the theme right in front of me on this campus. The school motto, Faith and Learning.
Even though I did not attend chapel here, this chapel was very important to me. In my first year at this dreary time of year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I often sat by myself in odd times of the day, alone and lonely in the very back pew of this chapel, right behind that pillar, where I hoped no one would see me. I was a confused freshman, not having great success, and I really just wanted to go home.
This chapel was a place of solitude where I could think, meditate, and pray. With the support of family and faculty mentors here, my great classmates, I got through this rough patch, and I continued these chapel visits regularly until I graduated. Now, in the third form, we not only had Sunday chapel, we had mandatory Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening chapel. But in the fourth form, they eliminated Mondays and Fridays, and they became voluntary. But Mondays, different organizations or people could volunteer to lead a service.
When I thought about this talk tonight, I said, “Well, I've never done a chapel talk, but I did do a chapel service.” Unfortunately, my reason for that chapel service had little to do with spirituality or faith. I was struggling with my grades in fourth form, and if I could just get a few more points to bring some low seventies into the mid-seventies—that's a C—I could get into fourth group and get out a mandatory study hall, which was held in a room accurately called “The Pit.” Now The Pit was where the library is now on the first floor. There were 60 or so wooden top desks in neat rows. Overlooking them was a raised platform with a desk where the Master of the day would sit and monitor the study hall every evening, watching over us poor performing students from the third and fourth forms.
The heavy wooden desktops opened up and underneath, carved over multiple years, were the names and dates and sayings of us past poorly performing students. My inscription read “Hick was here 1970- 1971.” It was the Shawshank Prison of study halls.
If I could get a few higher points in my weaker subjects, geometry and sacred studies, I could get out of study hall. So the most logical way to get out of The Pit would be by making and studying flashcards for geometry to memorize theorems, or writing a more thoughtful essay on the Sermon on the Mount.
But this 14-year-old mind had an easier way to achieve this success by currying favor with my gentle, easygoing, sacred studies master, Reverend Sandy Ogliby, by volunteering to do a chapel service. That should get me some points for my grade. My roommate Greg and I planned this together—although he was already out of study hall, but he sorely needed someone to play cards with on D Corridor during study period.
The Vietnam War was going on, so we chose an anti-war theme where we would play musical snippets on the turntable, right here at this lectern, from albums from Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills. Then we would stop the turntable, pick up the needle, come up here, read an anti-war verse from the album jacket cover, then sit down, have meditation, and we rinsed and repeated this for 30 minutes at the chapel service.
Not a lot of hard work with it. As we filed out the chapel, this chapel with Reverend Ogliby and the six or so other students who came to the voluntary service, he said he was pleased that we had volunteered to lead a chapel service, and he “found it interesting.” My thoughts as a 14-year-old were, “I’ll be out of The Pit by next semester in January when the grades are posted.” Yes, they publicly posted everyone’s academic grade group in the front foyer—very humbling. When the grades were posted in January, I was back serving time in The Pit, knowing that I would have to get to work, or I would be “NIB-ed”—or not invited back—for my fifth form year.
During Covid, when many of my generation were stuck at home, we began purging attics and basements. And during that time, I found letters my mother had kept in a trunk, which I had never seen.
There was a batch of letters from St. Andrew’s. The first in the spring of 1970 from William “Bull” Cameron—Do you know his name? From the old gym? Assistant head of school, and I think he was the entire admission staff—welcoming me as a third former to the Class of 1974, and most importantly, with a full scholarship. About two months later, another letter from Bull Cameron, apparently which was in response to my mother who had asked for more time to assemble all of the clothes required for the St. Andrew’s dress code. I was a growing boy, and had no black suit—no suit at all—no blue blazer, no summer blazer, no gray wool slacks, no black shoes. I had clothes, but I didn’t have the St. Andrew’s clothes.
In that letter, Bull Cameron said he put $600 in my school blue checking account. Yes, we had school checking accounts. They wanted us to all be bankers, I think. And I don't believe Bull Cameron would’ve used Venmo, even if it existed. This money could be taken out by my parents to buy my dress clothes. I never learned this from my parents who may have been embarrassed by this gift, and I also learned we were poor.
Another letter from my advisor Bob Moss wrote, “Joe is doing well in the sciences and English, but “was not working up to his ability in other subjects and could risk not being invited back.” I am sure my mother was embarrassed. Her son, an altar server, a youth leader at our home church, would flunk out of St. Andrew’s for failing sacred studies.
I learned by piecing other letters together from close family members who were serving and suffering in that horrible war in the South East Asia, what her true worry was. And that was this—a SSS Form 7, a Selective Service Status card. A draft card. She was worried I was going to be NIB-ed, and I would not likely be able to go to college, and would be eligible for the draft with no options for an educational deferment.
I learned as I reflected on my childish attempt to improve my sacred studies grade with a poor effort to protest Vietnam War, my mother was praying that I’d never be drafted.
I did make it to fifth form, and with support of many great faculty here, including Bill Amos, Bob Colburn, and of course Sandy Ogilvy, and there were many more of them. But these masters had faith in me and made me learn that I could work up to my ability. I cannot be more thankful for what St. Andrew’s has done for me and my family.
As I end this talk, I hope all of you find your place for solitude here, for prayer or meditation or thinking on this campus. Whether it’s in the woods, down on the grass docks, or better yet, walking along those beautiful farm fields, or on a kayak. I love all those places, but for me, when I visit, I'll find my place in that pew in the back. Thank you.