During the past year we have witnessed the very public and heroic deaths of those firefighters and police who were in the process of racing up many flights of stairs to aid stricken workers of the World Trade Center as those towers collapsed upon themselves, dooming at once and together both the rescuers and those whom they sought to assist.

 These are among recent occurrences of heroic bravery; there have been many others, in peace and in war, across the vast span of human events.  There are accounts of student and alumni heroism in the annals of this College whose founding we now commemorate.  One such is the story of Ray Ankeny who entered Westminster as a freshman in 1941 just before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 During the early 1990s, in preparation for my book When Titans Truly Were: Westminster College and the Second World War, I solicited memoirs from anyone associated with the College -- alumni, former faculty, administrators and staff, as well as from relatives and friends of the foregoing -- in short, from any associates of Westminster who had served or knew of those who had served during the War in any foreign theater of operations or on the home front.

 Nancy Bartley and Ray Ankeny were students in the same class at Westminster and during their short time together here they became very close.  When he enlisted in the Air Force they wrote regularly to each other even after his assignment overseas.  In 1944 she sent a gift for his birthday in December and a Christmas present.  Both were returned to her unopened.  What later was learned to have happened is related in her note to me: