OUR YEAR OF
September 14, 2021 / Opening remarks for the academic year BY HEADMASTER WILLIAM L. BURKE III
G
ood morning! We offer a special welcome to our outstanding Board of Trustees President, Mr. Jim Elcock ’77, father of our beloved Arrow and fabulously gifted musician Jimmy ’08, and to our new trustees who are engaged in their orientation program. Trustees are exceptionally bright, talented, devoted people who, like you and your families and our faculty and staff, devote themselves to advancing our School’s mission. In governing our School, the trustees hire and support the Headmaster, they oversee the School’s strategic planning, and they maintain ultimate fiduciary responsibility for the institution. Largely unsung, they are our true heroes. Let us express our tremendous gratitude to them. I often proclaim that I have the easiest and the best job in America—serving a Catholic independent day school for boys with a clear, important mission, a unified, focused board, a gifted, devoted faculty, a talented, dedicated staff, a loyal, engaged alumni, and truly great young men from wonderful loving families. Each of us plays a vitally important part in this symphony of love we call St. Sebastian’s School. We are one. We exist for the glory of God and for you students and your families. The rest of us are here to serve. And what an honor and a joy it is to do so!
20 |
ST. SEBASTIAN’S MAGAZINE
Our mission: A Catholic independent school, St. Sebastian’s seeks to engage young men in the pursuit of truth through faith and reason. By embracing Gospel values in an inclusive, nurturing community and by inspiring intellectual excellence in a structured liberal arts curriculum, St. Sebastian’s strives to empower students for success in college and in life. The ideal St. Sebastian’s graduate will be a moral and just person, a gentleman of courage, honor, and wisdom, a lifelong learner who continues to grow in his capacity to know, to love, and to serve God and neighbor. Our order of the day: Love God. Work hard. Take good care of one another. My purpose this morning is to help us launch our 20212022 academic year, which we plan on making the best year of our lives—until next year, when things will just keep getting better—and to offer some reflections on our year’s theme, Harmony, which I have selected at the suggestion of
