FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY



thanks to the wisdom and courage of some of her sons you now have
an excellent system of schools, crowned by this great University,
whose semi-centennial we celebrate. To the men and women, who,
by their tireless labor and unselfish devotion, have accomplished
these splendid results, we bring our tribute today. To those who
have labored on the farms or in the shops during this half century
for the restoration and upbuilding of Kentucky we bring congratula-
tions, but to those who under great difficulties and discouragements
have built these schools and this great University we bring the
highest meed of praise. For they were the true builders of the
Commonwealth.
    Emerson has truly said that "an institution is the lengthened
shadow of one man." This is certainly true of this, as of most edu-
cational institutions. There is one man whose deeds we commem-
orate today above all others. As we call Thomas Jefferson father of
the University oi Virginia, Andrew D. White, father of Cornell, and
Daniel C. Gilman, father of Johns Hopkins University, so the people
of Kentucky will always call James Kennedy Patterson the father
of the University ol Kentucky. "Pater Universitatis Kentuckiensis"
Professor William B. Smith has already crowned him in the title of his
beautiful "Appreciation," and so he will ever be known in American
history.
    Having the honor of being associated with you for many years
in the Association of Agricultural Colleges and in other educational
societies, and having often as a young college president sat at your
feet to honor you, I ask the privilege of bringing to you, President
Patterson, the greetings of your colleagues and admirers of the edu-
cational world, with their congratulations upon your splendid accom-
plishments in our common cause and their wishes that you may
have many more blessed years in which to contemplate the results
of your noble labors.
    No man, ladies and gentlemen, in the history of this State has
done so much for its education. Few have had so little with which
to begin such an undertaking, and no one ever encountered more
difficulties or faced them with more wisdom, courage and devotion.
It was President Patterson who first educated the people of Ken-
tucky to an appreciation of the importance of a state university. It
was he who fought all the battles of the college with the sectarians
and politicians: he who wrote all the laws and secured all the ap-
propriations for it. It was he who, single-handed, contended with
the legislature and with the courts. It was he who established the
university in the statutes as well as in the hearts of the people; and
finally, it was he who made all the plans, selected all the professors,
and directed all the interests of the university for forty-one years-



6