Clemson University President, Jim Barker, at his final graduation ceremony as Clemson President, told this to all present,
We don’t know exactly what life will be like as we begin the next chapter. But we know what we must do. We must think differently to solve the world’s problems, as well as the everyday challenges that we’ll encounter along the way. And we must strive to be brief, be brilliant and be gone — and be gone on to new challenges and new opportunities.
From his very beginning as University President in 1999, Jim embodied ‘cool.’ I know the idea of being ‘cool’ is dated, even cliché, however, some people just have it. Cool is the way they are, how they handle themselves, what they say and what they do. Jim Barker was cool before he was president, during his tenure, and even now. The man is simply, cool. Sometimes cool is just cool. Here are a couple of examples.
Shortly after being inaugurated as President, Jim wanted to emphasize some of the lesser known Clemson sports, so Jim went water skiing pulled by the women’s crew team.
At Clemson football games, the mascot does push ups after every score doing one push up for the total. As the crowd cheered, to our surprise, the mascot took off the head of the costume to reveal University President Jim Barker.
As I said, sometimes cool is just cool. Having declared my thoughts on President Barker, let me say this, as cool as he is, his wife and former Clemson first lady, Marcia, is far cooler.
When Carrie, Cayla, and I were in Clemson (in the pre-Abbie and Nate years), I was associate pastor at Fort Hill Presbyterian. Jim and Marcia were members of the church. Their younger son, Britt, was in my youth group. I got to know their family well as they got to know ours. While we shared a mutual affinity, Marcia loved Cayla from the get-go. Marcia was the Preschool Director and Cayla’s teacher along with Hazel Sparks, another quantumly cool woman in her own right.
Some years after we left Clemson, I took Nate to a Tiger basketball game. I wanted to make sure he saw the Barkers and they got a chance to see him, hoping that coolness might rub off.
No doubt, Marcia is still cooler than Jim. Cool is as cool does, and those who love children, especially preschool teachers and directors, they are the coolest of them all. Sometimes cool is just cool. As 1 Corinthians 13 reads, “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the coolest of these is love.”
