Longwood Doesn’t Lay
An Egg, But Does Hatch The
Right President

   Longwood hasn’t tossed a leaner.
   The university didn’t kick a field goal.
   The Lancers didn’t bang out a triple.
  The selection of Patrick Finnegan to be Longwood University’s 25th president is a ringer.
   A touchdown.
   The grandest of slams.
   That truth was probably self-evident to those involved in the presidential search process from the very beginning. But if there were any doubts those would have been erased after LU’s president-elect quoted, and channeled, Horton during his acceptance speech last Tuesday in front of a standing-room-only crowd in the Blackwell Ballroom.
   You know, Horton. No, not the famous explorer, not the scientist, not the 18th Century philosopher, nor the early 20th Century theologian. Horton—the wonderful elephant character created by Dr. Seuss. The Horton who heard a Who and, yes, the very same Horton who also hatched an egg.
   No stiff pomposity or inflated self-regard would allow such source quote material on that kind of occasion. Voltaire, yes. Dr. Seuss? Never.
   And we love it.
  Horton may have hatched an egg but Longwood University’s presidential search process certainly didn’t lay one.
  Find yourself a Brigadier General in the United States Army who quotes Patton or Eisenhower or Washington and you’ve probably got your run-of-the-mill excellent Army General, capable of everything asked of them.
   But when you find one quoting Dr. Seuss’s Horton, you’ve got something inside the uniform but also outside of the box. Longwood obviously knows that. As Board of Visitors Rector Dr. Helen Warriner-Burke noted prior to Brig. Gen. Finnegan’s speech, “Rarely does a candidate meet all of the criteria which guide the search (for president). Patrick Finnegan did. And quickly rose to the top. For he has experience and preparation in every value that we had defined—and then some.”
   And then some more.
  Brig. Gen. Finnegan noted that his daughters were absent from Tuesday’s ceremony because their children could not be absent from grade school. And then he added, “In fact, if I wasn’t here today I’d be in grade school, myself, because March 2 is National Reading Day, the birthday of Dr. Seuss. And I’ve enjoyed reading to my grandchildren and their classmates on this day each year.
   “So,” said a Brigadier General who is currently the Chief Academic Officer at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and has won the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, twice won the Defense Superior Service Medal and three times won the Meritorious Service Medal, “in the spirit and memory of Dr. Seuss, you should know that I meant what I said and I said what I meant. I plan to be faithful one hundred percent.”
   Thomas Jefferson couldn’t have said it better.
   Small things, like a point of starlight in the sky, can point in big directions. That quote from Horton Hatches The Egg says something about the qualities of Longwood University’s next president. There is no record kept anywhere but one imagines the list of men or women who have quoted Horton, or any other Dr. Seuss character, during their acceptance speech as a university president can be counted on one hand.
   Plenty of highly qualified men and women applied to succeed Dr. Patricia Cormier. Any one of them could have been a quite competent university president, many of them would have been very good, a handful, perhaps, excellent. Brig. Gen. Finnegan has exceptional qualities; his rank in the Army proves that, but there is a depth and well-roundedness that goes beyond all rank and files. LU had more than a general idea of what qualities comprise the personhood of Patrick Finnegan.
   Brig. Gen. Finnegan did quote a few others during his speech, but they are telling in their own right, too, because they speak of modesty and compassion: a quote by Sir Isaac Newton about standing on the shoulders of giants, used to give credit for his own success in life to those who came before him, and a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., about the absolute need to give oneself in the helping of others.
   Brig. Gen. Finnegan is just the kind of on-campus and in-community leader Longwood needs its 25th president to be, precisely the kind of skillful, personable advocate necessary to effectively work the halls of the General Assembly, and elsewhere, for funding in difficult and competitive times. For any time and all situations.
   Imagination, a sense of humor, self-confidence and humbleness, loyalty, commitment, warmth, and more than a touch of humanity are some of the qualities, the ethos, which shine through his quote cited above and say, upon reflection, as much about him as his impressive resumé does.
   If not more.
   As a first impression, it possesses lasting qualities.

—JKW—