The Chairman's Remarks: Charles A. Dana

Good evening, everyone, and welcome. It is wonderful to be together tonight, to celebrate our faculty and to recognize our Charles A. Dana Grant and our Charles A. Dana Research and Curriculum Development Fellowship recipients. Thank you to everyone who made tonight possible.

I love Norwich. As a graduate and now as Board chair, I am grateful for the people who make this place what it is. Tonight gives us a chance to thank some of those people.

I want to begin with a story from Mark Redmond, a good friend of mine, whose work at Spectrum in Burlington serves young people facing homelessness and other difficult circumstances. Mark has a podcast called "One Good Memory." I love the premise, and this story helps explain why.

Years ago, Mark helped take a group of boys from a residential treatment center skiing. While the skiing that day went well, Mark was frustrated that the kids had spent their entire allowance in the ski shop on the first day. Mark decided it was best not to ski the next day and head home a little early.

Then he overheard a boy named Kasey say, “Today was the most fun I ever had.”

Mark asked whether he meant since coming to the center. Kasey meant in his whole life.

Guess what? Mark had a change of heart, and they went skiing again the next day.

A year later, Kasey called to ask whether he could join another ski trip. That memory had stayed with him.
Mark connects the story to a passage from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: “And if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may sometimes be the means of saving us.”

To me, the best thing about this story, other than Kasey’s reaction to skiing, is that its central idea is true. A good memory can help sustain us. And research helps explain why.

Researchers have found that remembering a good experience can help us feel less upset and reduce our body’s response to stress. In another study, young people who had been through difficult times and could recall good memories seemed less vulnerable to depression. 

There is something powerful here. One good memory can become a resource we draw on when life gets difficult.

That matters for Norwich. Good memories are wonderful. But I think they can also be a kind of superpower.

Some are memories of joy and friendship. Others come from doing something we were not sure we could do. Understanding a difficult idea. Finishing a demanding project. Getting through a hard semester with help from someone who cared.

Those experiences can help us develop grit. Remembering them can support our resilience and help us manage stress. When the next challenge comes, we have something real to draw on. We have struggled before. We have learned before. We have found a way through.

And that brings me to the faculty we recognize tonight.

The Charles A. Dana grants and the research and curriculum development fellowships recognize scholarship, creative accomplishments, and teaching excellence. We are grateful for your work and proud to celebrate you tonight.

Your work is an important part of what students carry with them from Norwich. A difficult idea finally understood. A question that opened their minds. A professor who expected more of them and helped them rise to the challenge.

And those experiences happen all across Norwich.

They happen on the athletic field, when a teammate helps us find a little more than we thought we had. In the Corps, when we learn that someone else is counting on us. In a residence hall, when a friend sits with us through a difficult night. Or in a quiet conversation with a staff member who notices we are struggling and takes the time to help.

Some of our best memories are simply of being together. The laughter. The friendships. The feeling that we belonged here.

For our cadets and our civilian students, those moments become part of what Norwich means. Years later, when life gets hard, they can remind us that we have faced challenges before, that people believed in us, and that we do not have to face everything alone.

That is part of the lasting value of a Norwich education. What happens here goes with us.

Before we leave tonight, I hope each of us will take a moment to remember a great Norwich memory. A person. A conversation. A moment when we discovered something about ourselves that we still draw on today.

If you have the chance, share that memory. And if the person who helped create it is still in your life, tell them what it means to you.

To tonight’s recipients, thank you for the work you do and for what you give to Norwich. You may never know which moment a student will carry for a lifetime. But you help make this a place worth remembering.

Congratulations, and thank you.