ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE - ADDRESS
Pompton Lakes Junior High School, 1926
"Now that you are going away"

Albert Payson Terhune addressed the assembled students at their graduation exercises in Pompton Lakes Junior High School in 1926. He offered advice as one would to travelers on a long journey. Success would come to those who practiced good behavior, hard work and studiousness. Their personal success would then reflect directly on the reputation of their town, Pompton Lakes.

"In olden days, when travelers were about to start on a long and dangerous journey, their friends used to bring them provisions for the trip and weapons to guard them on the way; and clothing and armor.

I want to bring all of you today the clothes and food and weapons and armor you are going to need on your journey into other places and into other schools and into the great world itself. But I cannot. All I can do is to contribute this small share of advice to you. Yet perhaps it may help you, if you will heed it.

No old-time traveler, crossing the continent, was going on a more important journey than is each of you. And this is the bit of clothing and armor I offer you:

Wherever you go, people are going to judge your home town of Pompton Lakes by the way you speak and act and think. If you are clean and honest and diligent and if you make yourself liked and respected, then people are going to think that Pompton Lakes is a splendid place. And you and I both know that Pompton Lakes is just about the finest place of its size in New Jersey and anywhere else. But it is up to us to make other people think so, too, in the towns we are going to.

If you are a fine scholar, in the larger schools you are planning to attend, it will make the people in those schools think that Pompton Lakes School must be a magnificent institution. And we know it is. If you loaf over your lessons in your new schools in other towns, or if you are slovenly or ill-behaved, then the people in those towns are dead-sure to believe that the Pompton Lakes School must be worthless if it can turn out such poor scholars. And we know it is NOT worthless. We know it is a wonderful school. Let's make outsiders know it too by the way we tackle our studies in the new schools.

If you are disobedient or dishonest or shiftless, then the people in those other towns are not going to think highly of your parents or of your homes or of Pompton Lakes. It is in your power to make them believe you have the finest parents and the best homes in the world:--just by doing your best in everything.

Perhaps you don't believe that only one person can give outsiders that good or bad idea of a place. Well, just think a minute. There was just one Good Samaritan: and because he did a good deed, Samaritans have always been thought of as fine people. There was just One resident of Nazareth who won a name for divine goodness and wisdom. Yet His example has made us think of Nazareth as a heavenly place.

On the other hand, in ancient Greece, there was a county called 'Arcadia'. Just one stupid fellow came from Arcadia to Athens. But he was so stupid that the rest of the Greeks grew to believe that everyone in Arcadia was a fool.

You can make Pompton Lakes famous in other towns by your own good behavior and hard work and studiousness. Or you can make outsiders sneer at it. Which are you going to do? With such a school and such homes as you have had, it won't be hard for everyone of you to put Pompton Lakes on the map, everywhere, as a town that turns out the best and cleverest boys and girls in the United States. Isn't it worth trying?"