We have had good fortune to have had great leaders and teachers that have pointed us in the right direction and that have always been there for us to fall back on when we needed them. It is through their vision of the future that has positioned the American Chemical Society to a position of leadership in the chemical enterprise today. However, today we have new challenges and the Society is calling upon its leadership to redirect the organization in a new direction. I came across a poem while on a visit to Tuskegee University while touring the George Washington Carver Museum. I think it communicates the underpinning of my willingness to accept the challenge of leading the American Chemical Society at this time. I am deeply honored for the opportunity to serve. I share the vision and I see new opportunities to for the membership in these changing times.

The Bridge Builder
Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide--
Why build you the bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."