To my Beloved Mortals:
Emerging from the underworld, my weary bones have enjoyed their youthful visits across campus and into classrooms this week.
For those who have missed my appearance earlier this week, I encourage you to visit the lofty floor of Special Collections in the Woodruff Library where some of my precious treasures are now being housed. I hope all of you out there have been diligently preparing your grand costumes for my ball tomorrow night. As it is one of Emory’s greatest traditions, I expect to see each and every one of you there. I know where to find you.
I wanted to take you back 90 years into Emory’s history. In the Oct. 1908 publication of The Phoenix, I first introduced myself to the Emory community. I draw your attention to a few of my words back then:
Yes, I am a skeleton – a fleshless, bloodless, nerveless, brainless skeleton. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of. I speak from the vantage point of another world, a vast, mysterious, mystified world.
The dark part of my history began when I reached that period in life when the strength of mind is weakened by the decline of bodily vigor in old age. An old habit which I learned while campaigning seized with ever mastering power. I began drinking heavily, became physically incapacitated and finally landed in a home for inebriate incurables in Atlanta.
I curse the liquor now when I think of the shipwreck it made of the last years of my life. From the depths of bitter experience, I warn every young man and woman against its seductive wiles.
I will warn you once again that I will be watching tomorrow night.
I urge each of you to take full responsibility for your actions and the liquids you may choose to consume.
Be wise, dear mortals, for I assure you that I will still be lurking about campus even after this week is long gone.
I will eternally be STAYIN’ ALIVE (and you shall be as well – if you abide by my warning).
And as always, please remember:
Presidents may come, and presidents may go, professors may come, and professors may be squirted, students may come, and students may go – but DOOLEY lives on forever.
Eternally yours,
William M. Dooley
Illustration by Katrina Worsham
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
The Wheel is financially and editorially independent from the University. All of its content is generated by the Wheel’s more than 100 student staff members and contributing writers, and its printing costs are covered by profits from self-generated advertising sales.
