Eulogy

By James Hood

On a hot summer afternoon in June 1963, a small-statured military man knocked at my dormitory door at the University of Alabama. He announced himself to be HENRY GRAHAM. After a brief introduction--he was the National Guard general who had paved the way for me to walk past Governor George Wallace earlier that day, thus desegregating the university--he said in his polished and militaristic style, "I just came by to see who it was that had brought me down here to this hot-as-hell, God-awful place because he or she wanted to go to school." He said he also wanted to see the view from my window, which was of the hundreds of soldiers surrounded by military equipment in a clearing about 50 yards away. He said he was as surprised as I was to be in this chaotic situation. He had got the call from the President just as he was heading out the door for a golf outing. I'll never forget it: here was the guy in charge--a key player in a historic drama--bothering to take the time to chat, to see how I was doing. Before he finished this, the first of several visits, he shared a quote from Mark Twain with me: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." He had a profound impact on my life then, as now.

--James Hood, Madison Area Technical College