Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

 

Where I come from, cooking is how we ” good cooks” show our love. We are not chefs or master bakers. Neither are we like my dear Sister, reading a recipe for clarity, who define cooking as “My children have not starved to death.” “Good cook” is a coveted title awarded by an older Southern woman to a younger one, occasionally to man, after all rites of passage have been completed. To a Southerner who loves cooking, its is a form of art passed on from one artist to the next, not on paper or in books most of the time, but from the shared experience of watching and learning, failing and eventually mastering, one generation of “good cook” giving way eventually to the next.

 

Instead of sharing recipes, the usual response is “Oh, just let me make it for you,” since the reality is no two fists are quite the same size and one person’s “scant” might have too much in common with any one person’s “heaping.” There are many ways for this to go wrong.

 

My Sister is often asking me to quantify old family recipes. “My children need macaroni and cheese, and you are off in West Virginia. Speak to me in cups and teaspoons,” she says, “something I can measure.”

 

“Did you ever see Mama Bell measure anything as she seasoned everything ‘to taste’?” I ask. Sister is not amused. So as a tangible expression of our love for all of you, who have shown so much love to David and me as we complete our first full year here, I am going to try my best to “quantify” a few of our favorite recipes. If it doesn’t turn out quite right, well, I apologize if my fist is larger or smaller than yours. Let me know if I need to make you one of whatever it is because I said, that’s how my people show our love.

 

Mamaw Sarah’s Butterscotch Pie

Simple Crust:

1 cup plain flour (I like Gold Medal flour.)

1/2 cup Crisco shortening

1/4 cup cold water

 

Cut the shortening into the flour with a fork. Add the water. Finish mixing.

 

Pour onto a floured surface. Roll out to the right size. It should not be paper-thin, but better on the thin side than the thick side. If your surface doesn’t have lots of flour on it, and if you don’t flip your dough once or twice during the process, you might end up with a crust that’s stuck to the surface. We wouldn’t want that to happen.

 

Put into an ungreased glass pie pan. Press it into the bottom very well, because when it heats, it is going to want to rise from the surface which we would like to avoid. Cut the excess dough from around the sides. If you are baking the pie crust empty, be sure to pierce the bottom and sides with a fork in quite a few places to help keep the crust from rising. If you are using the crust for something like an apple or pecan pie, you can put the mixture into the raw dough, no need to pierce it.

 

Bake the crust while empty at 350 degrees until it’s done.

 

And that’s all there is to it. If you never dreamed you could make a homemade pie crust, you can use this crust for any pie.

 

Butterscotch Filling:

2 1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 cup whole milk

4 eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla (Don’t use imitation extract, just not as good.)

2 tablespoon butter (I almost never cook with margarine, always real unsalted butter.)

 

 

In a mixing bowl, stir together flour, salt and 1 cup of sugar. Add milk and eggs (yolks only) and beat with the mixer for one minute or so, just until the lumps are out. Pour the mixture into a thick iron skillet. Cook on low heat stirring often until it thickens.

 

Put the egg whites into a separate bowl and refrigerate.

 

In a separate iron skillet, also on low heat, brown 1 cup of granulated sugar until it forms a dark, but not burnt syrup.

 

When the pie mixture has thickened somewhat, pour the syrup mixture into it very slowly over low heat, stirring constantly. When mixed, remove the mixture from heat. Add vanilla and butter.

 

Pour the mixture into the pre-baked pie crust. Refrigerate until the mixture thickens suitably to cut with a knife.

 

When nearly ready to serve, make a meringue by beating the egg whites, preferably in a fairly large glass bowl, on high speed until glossy peaks form in the mixture. Add the remaining sugar, 1/4 cup, to the mixture slowly while mixing. Spread on the custard pie. Run under the broiler very briefly for the meringue to brown. It will go from lovely golden brown to burnt beyond recognition in the space of 30 seconds or less, so watch it constantly.

 

Don’t forget to refrigerate the pie again after this stage. Meringue does not like the refrigerator. Preferably, let the pie set an hour or two on the counter for both the custard and the meringue to come to perfect room temperature. Slice and serve.

Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

 

The National Institutes for Historically-Underserved Students Think Tank has once again come and gone. I miss it already, and I will share more highlights over the coming days.

In addition to being so incredibly proud of our students for so bravely sharing their real-life stories of educational success through great adversity, and in addition to lots of hugs, and smiles, and tears with friends old and new, the other highlight was getting to make homemade biscuits for Tony and Emmy Award Winner Lillias White and her musical director and pianist who just happened to write the dance music for “The Wiz,” Timothy Graphenreed.

Over dinner, Lillias (that’s right, we are first name basis now) remembered her grandmother’s home cooking, and I shared my memories of my Mamaw Sarah’s biscuits. She said she would love to have some of those, so the next morning I got out the iron skillet before daylight and made her some. We served them to her at the Blennerhassett Hotel and she was hooked.

Mamaw would not have known about Tony or Emmy Awards, but she knew about hospitality and friendship. I never dreamed two legends of the American stage world have my Mamaw’s biscuits for breakfast.

Add to that, they very nearly brought down the roof at the Smoot Theatre with their artistry and power, and all in all, that makes for a very satisfactory weekend for this country boy.

Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

 

In my life, I have met a few truly great men. It doesn’t happen very often. In my life, I have met a few more truly good men. It doesn’t happen nearly often enough. Seldom have I met a man who brings absolute goodness and absolute greatness together in one spirit. Such a man is Lionel Bordeaux, and it was a profound honor to be his guest at Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota last week.

President Bordeaux assumed his life’s calling and the Presidency of Sinte Gleska University in 1973, making him the longest serving University President in the United States. He has received more awards over more decades of service than anyone can count, recently inducted into the inaugural class of the national Native American Hall of Fame. This is not, however, a man who sits around and counts awards. A tall and elegant man with flowing white hair, I work hard to keep up with the nimble 80-year-old mind of a distinguished statesman and a passionate warrior for his people.

His office is like a living museum and a timeline of the Lakota people, and only the strength of his character keeps me focused on our conversation rather than allowing my eyes to wander along the walls into the nooks and crannies, each one filled with a memory, many of those memories moments in American history in which he took part.

Dr. Bordeaux, however, is not a man living in the past. He respects it, reveres the sacrifices and the gifts of his ancestors, but he is clearly focused forward as he discusses the co-occuring tragedies of suicide, poverty, lack of economic opportunity, and hopelessness which consume far too many of the people he is working so hard to empower. He talks to us about families living on $3,000 a year, three suicides occurring within a one-week period, governments that make promises he is still waiting for them to keep, an educational model which was built on European rather than indigenous values, and the history of his people which is so often rewritten from the White man’s point of view.

He has every right to be angry at people who look like us, to shut us out or to associate us with an oppressive past. Instead, he welcomes us to his homeland and places us right at the center of the most important day of the University’s year.

Later that day, after taking part in the grand procession during which we walked with him and other elders and leaders, many in traditional attire, Indian drumming and chanting surrounding us, in a great circle around the huge room filled with graduates and their families, he rose to the podium at Commencement to confer degrees on more than 60 graduates, from GED recipients to master’s degree recipients. We could feel the palpable reverence his people have for him. Perhaps no one has given so much for so long to his people, and they know it.

I had the distinct honor of offering remarks to the graduates and presenting to him and his daughter, Vice President Debbie Bordeaux who is never far from her father’s side the whole day, the Generations Award from the National Institutes for Historically Underserved Students, one of the first awards presented to multiple generations of the same family who advocate for civil rights. It was easy to speak with humility in the presence of those assembled, but harder than usual to find words worthy of the moment. In the moment, I had met a 99-year-old tribal elder, a woman who might weigh a hundred pounds, who through sheer force of will had stood in the road, risking death, and stopped trucks sent to pillage her homeland. Yes, it was very easy to be humble in such a moment.

After Commencement, he shared his table with us and we enjoyed the bounty of food prepared for us and the whole community. Then we reluctantly said goodbye to our new friends, and I looked back over my shoulder as we drove away. Brady and I were quiet for a while because the moment we shared with the good people of Sinte Gleska University really defied the limitation of words. It still defies that limitation, even as I try to share it with you. I thought about the partnerships, the cultural sharing, I hope we will be able to forge between West Virginia University at Parkersburg and Sinte Gleska University. I thought about how I hope to take some of our students there one day and to welcome their students to West Virginia. I thought about the basic human understanding, the fundamental building block of real progress, which can occur with two such different parts of the world truly see each other and truly listen. I thought how I would measure my life a success if anything I ever did as a leader measured a minuscule fraction of what Dr. Bordeaux has done and is still doing.

At first I felt sad because a moment so important to me was over, but then I felt joyful and so very appreciative that I had been given a moment few people are given, a moment which I hope to repeat one day as the spirits of my ancestors are drawn again to South Dakota to be the guests of the spirits of their ancestors, and once again I sit in the presence of this good and great man and the people who love him.

Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

 

It was a special moment to come home to Tougaloo College today where my academic career began. Historic Woodworth Chapel still stands as one of the cradles of the Civil Rights Movement on this Historically-Black college campus which was once a plantation where slaves toiled.

My friend and colleague, Dr. La’Tara Osborne-Lampkin, an educational researcher at Florida State University, invited me into her work forming a Research Alliance of HBCUs in Mississippi, aligned with our National Institutes for Historically-Underserved Students, and we are on a listening tour in advance of presenting this work in September at the White House Conference on HBCUs. Today we visited with two old friends, Professors Arna Shines (a former student) and Bruce O’Hara.

Tomorrow we visit several more HBCUs, one of which is a community college, a rarity in the HBCU network. Of course, I am spreading the good news about WVU Parkersburg everywhere I go to friends new and old and recruiting some new participants for the National Institutes.

I am topping off a very productive work day by having dinner with my one and only sister, so all in all a very fine day for me. I will be home to West Virginia with new ideas and new partners very soon.

Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

 

Once in a very rare while, you have an experience which defies being put fully into words, yet you feel compelled to try.

On Friday, at the invitation of John and Karen Denbigh, David Creel, Keith Gaskin, and I visited with internationally-acclaimed metal artist Jeff Fetty and his lovely wife Charlotte at their home and workshop in Spencer, West Virginia. If I had ever doubted it before, in that moment I found “almost home, West Virginia.”

Their retreat is set very high on one of the most prominent hills in the area, looking down over the picturesque town and the verdant landscape. We visited outside on the deck for a while where I am told the moods of the weather change from hour to hour, sometimes full sun when you can see for miles as it was during our visit, sometimes brooding and moody with clouds settled in along the hilltops.

John is a member of our Board of Governors, and he and Karen are among Jeff’s loyal patrons, both from West Virginia and from around the globe. Jeff and Charlotte were such gracious hosts, and he is recognized as among the best in the world in his field of art. Touring his workshop was a rare pleasure, viewing one-of-a-kind creations made with tools and through processes that are hundreds of years old. And Charlotte’s handmade quilts brought my grandmothers and great-grandmothers back to life in my imagination.

Here are a few photos to document our visit, but it was one of those moments only fully shared by those who were present in it.

There is so much beauty and so much talent in West Virginia. Will you share with me one of the most beautiful spots and/or one of the most talented people you know in this state, another of West Virginia’s treasures hidden right around us in plain view?

Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

 

I have some dreams for WVU Parkersburg which will be unveiled this summer. What dream, large or small, do you have for our community? We might or might not be able to make it come true, but we can surely dream it, together and without judgment, and be better for the conversation.

Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

 

Today, I am reflecting on grace, a simple word, and really a simple state of being, although sometimes it takes a lifetime to find it. Sadly, I imagine some never realize when it has been found.

In some seasons it is all around me, fluttering like a Monarch butterfly, curling over my toes and pulling me toward it like a wave breaking on the sand, a strong wind which seems powerful enough to bend me to its will, yet does not bend me.

This is one of those seasons for me. How many of us get up every day with excitement and wonder because we are getting to do precisely what we feel called to do in precisely the place we want to do it? How many of us are surrounded by a team which really feels more like an extended family committed to a common goal? How many of us, many days, not all, feel more energized at the end of the day than at the beginning because it has simply been that good?

That is my life in this moment, my season of grace. I worked hard, but I can’t really say I caused it to happen or that I earned it. Many people work hard. I simply opened myself to grace and it found me. So that you know this is not a naive point of view,  there have been many seasons of my life in which grace has been much harder to find, seasons of loss and despair, seasons of scarcity and fear, seasons of longing when hope seemed a luxury for others. In those seasons, yes, even then, when I have stopped and looked for grace, it has usually found me, not in such abundance as now, but maybe in a letter from a distant friend, a phone call or a text from my sister who can psychically spot a low moment from a thousand miles, a kind word or small gesture from a stranger which made all the difference and cost the stranger very little in the grand scheme.

It was when I endured those low moments, and we all endure them, that I learned we all have the ability to become the grace others need to find in the world. We have the chance to be the kind strangers, psychic sisters, distant friends.

I am so thankful for my season of abundant grace, mostly because I know it is not guaranteed, that it will likely pass as most seasons do, and that it is a gift, not something of my making.

What’s your season like right now? Is there joy you would like to share or hardship we might help you to overcome…because that’s the thing about grace. The more we give away, the more we seem to find.

Dr. Chris Gilmer, President

 

I am back home in West Virginia, appreciating the place and my wonderful life here even more for spending a few days where my life started, on the country roads of Mississippi, during the Easter holiday. I drove along the road to Damascus and visited the church where my Mamaw Sarah took me as a child. When I closed my eyes, I could almost smell the aroma of dinner on the ground and hear “Rock of Ages” being sung by the congregation. I visited the burial place of that same woman, and my Papaw Carlton, remembering she got her wish to rest on the hillside where she told us she would await the trumpet of her Lord.

Further along the paths of my youth, I ended up in Standing Pine on the Turtleneck Road where my mother was born. Standing in the spot where we returned her ashes to ashes, dust to dust, a cold wind blowing strong against my face, I felt her in the distance, coming. She always comes to me in this place, today a mighty hawk surfing the billows, high and distant, slowly getting closer until finally this magnificent bird made three passes right in front of me, closer than a hawk ever comes, lingering in reassurance before soaring back to the heights, eventually disappearing across a pasture into the tree line. Tell me that wasn’t my mama if you like, but you will be wasting your time.

I have always heard we never really know where we are going until we know where we have been. I know and I celebrate it. How about you? My new friends in West Virginia often hear me talk about the road to Damascus, so I share these words and photos to help make it as real to you as it is to me.

I am starting a new blog, random hopes, dreams, and reveries about times long past and about the moments in time we are sharing. Together, we will remember where we started and imagine where we are going as a university and as individuals. Tell us where you came from and what it means to you, and join me as we blog together today and in the years to come.