George Kren’s Comments at His Retirement Ceremony, May 4

I am deeply touched and moved by the ceremony and thank you for it individually and collectively. In language of the current generation, to see so many friends here is “awesome.” The next line should be “I really don’t know what to say” but that is a phrase that has never yet been part of my vocabulary. I am particularly pleased that the traditional gold watch has been replaced with the arrangement of my photographs for the Beach Museum. I could not have wished for anything more. The glass piece is stunning, and I even know the artist.

In reviewing the 35 years that I have been a member of this history department, what stands out most is that I am and have been part of a community, using that term in Ferdinand Tönnes’s sense. What Tönnes means by the term community is a group where relations are personal, and where people care for each other as individuals. When I was in the hospital at Christmas in 1993, I had the most dramatic demonstration of this sense of belonging by the concern shown to me by members of the department and other members of the university. On Christmas Eve and afterwards, nearly every member of the department visited me. One colleague stayed in Manhattan over the holidays to stay near me rather than go home for the holidays. At that time, expectations of others, which I disappointed, were that I would not be available for future New Years’ celebrations. I have had not only good colleagues in the department, but it has been the source for the founding of important friendships — some going back to the 1970s, and some of more recent vintage.

I have been able to establish friendships with a number of individuals outside the department. Leon Rappoport from psychology and I, in a true collaboration, have been able to produce work together, most notably our book on the Holocaust, which neither one of us could have done as well alone.

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