GAMBIER — Gambier kicked off its Fourth of July festivities with Poet Laureate of the Year Adele Davidson announcing Royal Rhodes, professor emeritus of religious studies at Kenyon College, as Citizen of the Year.
“He’s been a poet laureate of Gambier numerous times, and he’s just truly remarkable,” Mayor Leeman Kessler said.
As befitting a poet, Davidson wove the words of the Star Spangled Banner into her introduction.
“… Oh, say, can you see that we sing Royal Rhodes, whom so proudly we hail prized professor of Odes.
“…through the twilight’s last gleaming he won’t flag in his labors, with his good deeds devoted to feeding our neighbors.
“… So in days when divisiveness seems all the rage, Roy’s community work keeps us on the same page.
“…Roy spearheads his projects with great generosity, with brilliance, resilience, and vast virtuosity.
“…His humorous emails are gallantly streaming and his star spangled banter with wittiness gleaming.
“…like the Ransom Hall sculptures, we’re eager to crow, for it takes a whole village to tell what we owe to this royal for whom if we heaped all our praise it would fill all the Dumpsters of all Dumpster days.
Time for a group assignment
Kessler called on Gambier residents to complete a group assignment: rally around each other.
Noting his sixth-grade daughter does not enjoy group assignments in school because she either has to do everything or nothing, Kessler flashed back to eighth-grade history class when the instructor instructed students not to allow anyone to be a sponge or a dictator.
“That is, make sure that everyone is participating, make sure that not just one person is telling everyone else what to do,” he explained.
“I think this is incredibly useful advice for an eighth grader or a rising sixth grader, and today on the 4th of July, I think it’s a really helpful message for all of us because the work we are all called on to do as Americans, the work of providing for the common good, is not something we do for ourselves and by ourselves.
“It is in fact a group assignment. It takes all of us listening to one another, compromising, finding common ground. That is how we have achieved any amount of greatness in this nation.”
Below are Cheryl Splain’s photos from Gambier’s Fourth of July celebration.
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