Fruit: Our Lasting Influence

This past weekend, Charter class member Christie Bell Vilsack was the Baccalaureate speaker and the recipient of an honorary degree – Doctor of Humane Letters – from Hamilton College.

On Saturday, May 22, Christie gave a wonderful speech to Hamilton’s graduating seniors about having a sense of place and time. She spoke at the Baccalaureate service, which is a multi-denominational service to give thanks.

On Sunday, May 23, Christie received her honorary degree during Hamilton’s Commencement program. The citation describing her contributions follows:

“By no means limited to elective or appointive office, public service takes many forms, beginning with volunteer efforts in one’s local community. Throughout her years as a teacher and partner with her husband in his political career, Christie Bell Vilsack has assiduously worked in volunteer capacities to promote commununity betterment, especially through education, and her activism has clearly demonstrated what can be accomplished with a committed heart and will.

In many ways that commitment began here on this Hill, when she was an education major in the Charter Class of Kirkland College. Wearing a hard hat, she tramped to class through the mud as the campus was being constructed around her, and here she met her soon-to-be husband, Tom Vilsack, Hamilton Class of 1972. She began her teaching career in nearby Waterville, and after Tom obtained his law degree, they settled in her hometown of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, literally on Main Street.

While Tom practiced law, she taught middle and high school language arts and later English and journalism at Iowa Wesleyan College while also raising two sons. Meanwhile, through a remarkably successful team effort, Tom’s political career took him from Mayor of Mount Pleasant to two-term Governor of Iowa. As Iowa’s First Lady from 1999 to 2007, Christie Vilsack took as her personal mission the advancement of education and particularly the promotion of literacy. She became the state’s champion of libraries, school and public, and as part of her statewide literacy initiative, she traveled extensively to further the cause. Today, while her husband serves as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, she has undertaken a new volunteer effort as executive director of the Iowa Initiative, aimed at reducing unintended pregnancies. As an enthusiastic advocate of causes to which she is committed, she exemplifies the new and more active role of women in our public life.”

Congratulations, Christie!

“Fruit, Our Lasting Influence?” Really? This is embarrassing, though not the posts right above this, which I salute. (Hello, Daphe.) But please, stop spelling the Womyn’s Center like something from a gynecology seminar at Renaissance Fair, and think of a more dignified name for this. Why does everything that has to do with Kirkland have to be so vexing? We are not all sitting around in Birkenstocks playing zithers and spinning our own yarn. And yes, support Christie. She will turn our produce into excellent desserts.