Howard W. Hewitt – Matt Dudevoir ’06 poked a little fun at himself in Thursday’s Chapel Talk. He admitted following the President and Dean was a daunting assignment.
“I’ve never heard of me either,” he opened. “Who better to follow such accomplished and intimidating men, than some guy who took six years to graduate from Wabash and still hasn’t moved out of Crawfordsville? Nice going, Sphinx Club.”
But the reason it took Dudevoir six years to graduate was because of his commitment to the National Guard. Duedvoir is on active duty as a Second Lieutenant in the 151st Long Range Surveillance branch. He is also working in a Guard development program trying to recruit new officers. He has served a tour of duty in Afghanistan
But after a few jabs at President Pat White regarding the works of Herman Melville, Dudevoir got to the gist of his comments on Sgt. Jeremy Wright ’96, and Sergeant Major Jeffrey Jeff McLochlin ’81 Both were killed in Afghanistan.
“Wright and McLochlin were extraordinary men, for even in such elite company as the Green Berets or the Army Rangers, they were held in awe by their peers,” Dudevoir said. “They were giants among giants, but before any of this they were Little Giants. It is telling, I think, that at the Wabash College alumni run this fall, Jeremy Wright’s family returned to Wabash to see his friends run together. Likewise, when I met the McLochlin family and told them that I was a Wabash man, his sister’s eyes welled up with tears. ‘The happiest days of my life,’ she told me, ‘Were when I would watch Jeff play football at Wabash. Do they still say ‘DePauw to Hell, we’ve got the Bell?’ ”
He held up the two fallen soldiers as examples of Wabash Always Fights and challenged the students to be like their Wabash brothers.
“A soldier does not subject his body to the abuses of Ranger School in order to wear a little strip of cloth, anymore than an athlete pushes his body to its limits day after day just to earn a varsity letter or a championship ring, nor anymore than a Wabash student pledges the Sphinx Club and endures a semester of hazing just to wear a little white hat, or how a young man volunteers to attend an all-male institution and work like a dog for four years just to earn a diploma. We might think we challenge ourselves in order to earn these trifling emblems of accomplishment, but I am certain that it is something far greater and more insatiable that drives us to push ourselves time after time.”
Dudevoir challenged the young men to do great things because they know that they can and because they’d let themselves down if they did not. “You will pursue this quest tirelessly to the end of your days, for your work is never done, but its pursuit will be its own reward. Wabash Always Fights, and so shall each of you Little Giants. Those who choose this sort of life are truly Giants, even among their own kind, for their accomplishments carry the rest of us along with them to newer and greater places. This is the legacy of Sgt Wright and SGM McLochlin, but theirs is not a legacy for soldiers alone, nor is the military the sole arena whereby Wabash men may achieve greatness.”
Dudevoir’s entire Chapel talk is available as a Podcast.
