Dedication Remarks: Saundra Tracy, Alma College President

Here is the complete text of Alma College President Saundra Tracy's opening remarks followed by some remarks of other distinguished people. We are grateful to President Tracy's allowance for the remarks to be published as well as the extraordinary manner in which the dedication ceremony was held at Alma College, Michigan. Photo by Teresa Paprock


Welcome today to his beloved campus, and may the Bishop’s presence be felt here among us.

Welcome this afternoon to Alma College for this very special gathering. This college community wanted a way to preserve the memory of Bishop Thomas Makarios – to keep his spirit among us long into the future. Of course, his spirit will be kept alive in the lives and works of the many Alma students who he taught, mentored.

But we wanted something tangible as a reminder of his faithfulness, and the wisdom he shared with us all. The idea of a beautiful work of art, visible to all who stepped on this campus, seemed just right. This, the wonderful sculpture we dedicate today will remind all who pass this way of the life and work of this extraordinary man.

I read to you the words of Dr. Ross MacKenzie, professor emeritus of Union Theological Seminary and the academic advisor for Bishop Makarios during his doctoral program sent to us by Dr. Anirudham, leader of the Diaspora Keralite-Indian Community in North America. (READ Excerpts from letter)




Below is the complete text of Professor MacKenzie's remarks. We are grateful to him for allowing us to read his edifying words.

Dr. Anirudhan's remarks can be read in a separate entry http://orthodoxmissionamerica.blogspot.com/2009/06/bishop-makarios-memorial-dedication-dr.html




Dr. Ross Mackenzie.
Professor Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary
Richmond, Virginia
Historian Emeritus, Chautauqua Institution
Chautauqua, New York


At this time, when Alma College unveils a figurative sculpture that represents the spiritual ideals of the late Bishop Thomas Makarios, I eagerly add my own tribute of praise. He was for nearly five years a graduate student at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. The thesis, which he completed in our Department of History, represented one of the continuing ideals of his life—ecumenical relations. Bishop Makarios, however, was not just a gifted scholar. One of my happiest memories of the student I knew then as Father Thomas was to watch faculty children on the seminary campus follow after him like the Pied Piper of Kottayam, and sit with him to hear the magical stories he spun about the bountiful part of the world that lies between the Western Ghats and the Arabian.

During my time in South India I told him that in the United States, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line from A to Z; whereas in the boundaries of his church, the line moves like a zigzag from Y to B to M to Z. That is how we traveled, and everywhere the people welcomed him as priest and friend, whether for ceremonies of the church or celebrations of ordinary life. Never a Sunday came without his celebrating the Holy Qurbana, a Eucharistic service of exquisite beauty.

During the months in which I served as visiting professor at his Orthodox Seminary in Kottayam, South India, I visited the village in which he had grown up. We went first to the ancient church of St. Mary in which he had been baptized, confirmed, and ordained. After lunch with his then elderly parents, the two us of walked through the natural beauty of the Kerala estate in which he had been brought up, in a family of five, with two other brothers who became priests, a sister who became a nun, and a sister who taught in a church school. He paused on the walk, looked around, and whispered, “God, I love this place.” I had never heard the gentle priest speak with such passion. You may reckon it as true that he whispered that also about Alma College many a time.

When I learned of the accident in England, from the injuries of which he died seven weeks later, I shared the deep grief of his whole church and of this academic community. I honor Alma College for showing its own deep affection for a priest among priests, for a hierarch who was also at one time my own bishop, and for a red-robed friend and advisor to hundreds of students, members of the faculty and of staff.

So let us hear, to close, these words from the Holy Qurbana that he knew by heart and sang countless times: “Grant, O Savior, that the faithful departed may be raised from the dead imperishable, garlanded with the glory of the Lord.”