Maybe It's because we are getting old that we appreciate sweetness and sentiment, and can weep unashamedly when those trails are self-evident, as they most certainly were last Tuesday evening in Bass Auditorium.
And what a grand evening it was, with just the right blend of nostalgia and irrefutable facts. Even a stranger in our midst, one which makes life in a small city so delightful and refreshing, couldn't have helped but observe that these Greenville folks set great store by one Prof. Herman Solomon.
It was a wonderful party, and we are still wondering how it remained a secret until the curtain riz. Just think of all that detail, and not even a smidgen of it leaked to the guest of honor. It was so thoroughly planned, and so happily executed, and wasn't it wonderful to spend an evening in atmosphere so filled with sweetness, thoughtfulness, and goodwill.
Orchids to the Junior High PTA for such a grand gesture to a grand guy if we ever knew one. And thank you, Marie Suares, for letting us be on stage for a close-up of Herman's triumph. And who said the prophet is not without honor save in his own country anyway? Let him now eat his words.
Sitting there on the stage the other night, we suddenly recalled another facet of character which, somehow, was escaping comment in that running narrative, "Herman Solomon, This is your Life."
Namely his and Ruth Solomon's thoughtfulness and kindliness toward servicemen, and particularly homesick servicemen at the Greenville Air Base throughout the second World War.
It would have been a long war for a lot of boys who had been mathematics or philosophy or language majors in college if it hadn't been for Herman and Ruth. A GI's knowledge of the vortices of Descartes availed him little when and if he pulled K. P. Nor did familiarity with Kant, Hegel, or Schopenhauer help the status of a grease monkey on the flight line. But the Solomons kept open-house and often for those young men who longed for serious-minded and high-minded conversation.
Speaking of conversation, we had us a speech all written out and almost committed to memory, just in case we were called on at the PTA party. Not wishing posterity to be denied, our effort, we quote same herewith:
"Whenever I hear anybody say that such and such a problem calls for the wisdom of Solomon, I always want to ask what Solomon he has in mind. Is he talking about Solomon in the Bible or Herman Solomon?
What do we know about this muchly vaunted wisdom of old King Solomon anyhow? All we remember is that he ordered a baby to be cut half in two, in order to ascertain said infant’s own mother's Identity. This was a clever gesture in human relations, and it worked. And King Solomon forthwith rested on his laurels. Yet biblical history tells us that he only had two mothers on his neck.
Now you take my good friend. Prof. Herman Solomon. He has to settle issues and arguments every day of the more than thirty years he's taught school. And those settlements call for much more than the so-called wisdom of Solomon. For Herman must have, above all else, the saving grace of a sense of humor: likewise, the courage of King David, the compassion of Ruth, and the patience of Job. P.S. No wonder Herman is Man of the Year.
BC.
