Thanksgiving Message
Dear Friends in the Trinity Community,
Happy Thanksgiving! Each year at this time, as the holiday quiet
settles over Main Hall, I like to think about the many blessings
we enjoy together at Trinity, and to offer thanks to all those who
made our lives more enlightened, who were sources of inspiration
and hope for our students and colleagues alike, whose generosity
of spirit, talent, and occasional treasure made our way a little
easier along the way.
Gratitude is, sadly, not a word we hear too often in public discourse.
This year’s election rhetoric seemed especially lacking in
gratitude and its deep source in the virtue of charity. Gratitude
sometimes seems almost impossible in the face of the global tragedies
of this era, and yet, gratitude must be expressed as evidence of
our hope in the future, our faith that peace and justice will ultimately
prevail.
As members of the Trinity learning community, we are witnesses
to a vastly different way of life than most people in the world
can even imagine. We do not often think about this in such global
terms, or publicly express our gratitude for the great gift of learning,
but our unspoken thanks is clearly evident each day as students
and faculty and staff work together to reach new levels of understanding
and mastery of many different and difficult areas of knowledge.
This year, as we celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the Sisters
of Notre Dame de Namur, we have been able to express our gratitude
more directly to the sisters for the great heritage and tradition
of Trinity.
Over the years, countless women and men have worked to ensure Trinity’s
vitality, excellence and sustained commitment to a truly value-centered
education in the best sense. We are grateful to the SNDs, faculty,
staff, alumnae, benefactors and countless friends whose hard work
and generosity made our teaching and learning today possible.
In the daily life of Trinity, some of the hardest work imaginable
is accomplished by colleagues who are not always recognized: our
housekeepers and groundskeepers, electricians and engineers and
plumbers, cooks and ladies on the serving line, security guards
who work through the night to keep Trinity safe, and all of our
service personnel who are deeply devoted to Trinity’s success
and whose work is essential to all of the other work we do. Similarly,
the staff in our many departments work long hours to ensure that
financial aid packages are disbursed and library books are ordered
and email servers keep running and annual fund gifts are collected
and new students are recruited and current students are properly
advised, counseled and cared for in myriad ways. Many thanks to
all of our staff for your hard work and dedication to Trinity!
Of course, our faculty are the true intellectual and teaching center
of Trinity, and in the hundreds of thousands of student contact
hours that occur each year here, none of us can possibly know all
of the ways in which the faculty touch and transform the lives of
individual students. I am deeply grateful to all members of the
faculty for all that you do to ensure that Trinity’s mission
lives well in the achievements of our students and graduates.
Our students, too, deserve many thanks. Perhaps it’s not
such a small secret to reveal that many of us who have chosen our
life’s work in academe do so precisely because we reap so
many rewards from working with each generation of students. Trinity
students amaze, delight and challenge all of us each day. I am particularly
grateful to all of the students who are engaged so deeply with community
service projects, or internships where Trinity’s light truly
shines in the professional world, or who practice and play so hard
on our athletic teams, or who help Trinity immensely in student
government work, or who work in our offices daily. Thank you!
Even as we reflect on the people in the Trinity community to whom
we owe many thanks, let’s also take time in this season to
thank those in our families and communities who support our students
here, who help Trinity to make the kinds of connections that open
doors to internships and career paths for our students, or who help
Trinity to find new resources to support scholarships and capital
improvements.
Finally, we also cannot leave this moment of Thanksgiving without
thinking of those members of the armed forces who are sacrificing
so much so far away in the name of the freedom we sometimes take
for granted. Members of the extended Trinity family are serving
the nation as well, and we remember them in a particular way as
we offer Thanksgiving prayers and gratitude this week.
I hope you enjoy the brief rest of this Thanksgiving break. When
we return on Monday, only a short time will remain as we finish
the semester, prepare for exams, and conduct the traditional Christmas
festivities. My gratitude is immense for all that we have accomplished
together this year; and my hope is equally large that we will achieve
even more in the months to come.
Happy Thanksgiving!
With many thanks,
President Patricia A. McGuire '74
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