"No man is happy if he does not work. Of all miserable creatures the idler, in whatever rank of society, is in the long run the most miserable." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1903 speech to the YMCA in Topeka, Kansas.
The carved engraved stones on this school built as a memorial to the Rough Rider President, retains a silent message about the ethics and values that helped shape American society in Oklahoma City. These ideals were chiseled into the lives of students and community as deeply as into the stone of these markers. The question is what replaced them and were they of study stuff or easily eroded materials that lost their stamina?
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| Gymnasium entrance |
"We have in our scheme of government no room for the man who does not wish to pay his way through life by what he does for himself and for the community. If
he has leisure which makes it unnecessary for him to devote his time to earning his daily bread, then all the more he is bound to work just as hard in some way that will make the community the better off for his existence. If he fails in that, he fails to justify his existence. Work, the capacity for work, is absolutely necessary; and no man s life is full, no man can be said to live in the true sense of the word, if he does not work. This is necessary, and yet it is not enough.
If a man is utterly selfish, if utterly disregardful of the rights of others, if he has no ideals, if he works simply for the sake of ministering to his own base passions, if he works simply to gratify himself, small is his good in the community. I think even then he is probably better off than if he is an idler, but he is of no real use unless together with the quality which enables him to work he has the quality which enables him to love his fellows, to work with them and for them for the common good of all."
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| NW corner |
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