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Epilogue

With the “summing up” and the description of my present duties, it seems a proper time to bring this volume to a close. Other topics could have been treated and perhaps should have been—for example, the Hoosier political personalities I have known, the Ristine-Wells Committee to study the reorganization of the State Department of Public Instruction, the New Harmony Memorial Commission, the boards of the James Whitcomb Riley Association and of the Lilly Endowment, the boards of various colleges and universities (Earlham, American University in Cairo, Howard, Tulane, and others), the High Council of Sigma Nu and the board of its Education Foundation, the TIAA-CREF board, the Council on Library Resources board, the board of the International Association of Universities, and many others.

For my readers who search here in vain for a topic in which they are interested, I offer the assurance that those topics were not omitted because I felt them unimportant. In a long life so many things seem important that the task of selecting among them is extremely difficult. But I have had to choose in order to keep this volume to a manageable size and also because, as I thought about the past, invariably the present intruded and my mind teemed with new opportunities that seemed available if my years allowed. I am reluctant to delay undertaking them longer while I write about the past.

Someday perhaps the most attractive opportunities that I now see ahead can be realized. I hope that at that time the spirit will move me to write about the topics untreated here, Providence being willing. Until then I beg the compassionate understanding of my friends who find themselves and their enterprises omitted from this modest volume.