The Luther-Roosevelt Long Walk Inscription

One tradition that has developed in the years ensuing since the end of World War I concerns the inscription in the pavement in front of Northam Towers. Since its placement in 1919, members of the Trinity community as well as visitors have generally avoided stepping on the inscription, perhaps instinctively aware that it is connected with some event in the College's history. The inscription in fact commemorates the visit in June 1918 of former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, who delivered an address and received an honorary degree at Commencement.

Colonel Roosevelt, as he was then known, was a friend of Trinity's president, Flavel S. Luther, a Republican and ardent Progressive. Active in local and state politics, Luther served two terms in the State Senate and chaired the Education Committee. The Luther-Roosevelt friendship grew out of shared political convictions as reflected in a long and frequent exchange of letters. A mathematician, astronomer and civil engineer, Luther served as the College's president from 1904 to 1919. It had long been his wish to have Trinity confer an honorary degree on the former president, but the latter generally declined such offers from colleges and universities. Luther found his opportunity in Roosevelt's suggestion that the College award an honorary degree to his friend, Russell Jordan Coles, a tobacco grower, naturalist and sportsman from Virginia. The Trustees agreed to confer honorary degrees on Coles as well as Roosevelt at Commencement in June 1918. Roosevelt accepted Luther's invitation to deliver an address at an open-air service on the Trinity campus the day preceding Commencement. Although in failing health by the spring of 1918, he nonetheless honored his commitment, not wishing to disappoint Luther and Coles.

Taking the theme of his address from Old Testament scripture, the former president dwelled on the emptiness of boasting and its prejudicial effect on the conduct of the war in Europe. He cited as his text a passage from First Kings, Chapter 20, Verse 11, in which the King of Israel responds to a boasting warrior: "Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." Roosevelt indicated that, in his estimation, thoughtless exaggeration of American might had reinforced the German will to pursue the war. He reminded his audience, estimated to have exceeded 5,000, that much work remained to be done and that the country had to gear itself up for the supreme effort. Less than a month later, Roosevelt's youngest son, Quentin, was shot down in aerial combat in France.

In January 1919, not long after Roosevelt's death, a suggestion was made in the Tripod that a suitable memorial of the event might be a tablet placed over Northam's archway bearing the biblical text that had inspired the 1918 address. Rather than on a tablet, the Old Testament passage in Latin was set into the pavement in front of Northam.