Leaving a Legacy
Letter from the Editor
The influential ancient Athenian leader Pericles said, “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” It is an important quote on something that is talked about often in the Legion of Honor: Legacy
Every day we are tasked to uphold and secure the legacy established by our founders and to share it with the world. But this also means thinking about what legacy we will leave behind. What lives will we have impacted while writing the great story of our lives? One excellent example of this in practice is the Spears Family Epsilon Epsilon Center for Excellence. This facility, currently being planned, will renew the Fraternity’s legacy of providing a Headquarters experience that is unrivaled and further empower the Legion of Honor to continue its mission of developing ethical leaders.
The concept of building, preserving, and sharing a legacy also appears in ways that may seem less note-worthy in the day-to-day pace of life, but are never less important.
Sometimes this appears as a new father holds his child for the first time. It is the start of one of life’s greatest responsibilities, and one of its most rewarding endeavors. The fathers we talked with prove that Sigma Nu’s values carry through in every aspect of life.
Sometimes this means stepping up to the challenge of preserving the legacy left to us, no matter the obstacles. The challenge is accepted not because it is directly in front of us but because the future deserves it and the past is owed it. The men of Eta Phi (Cal State Los Angeles) proved this when they worked with their alumni to revitalize the chapter at a critical time.
And then, when the stars align, we get the opportunity to lay our hands upon the start of a new legacy. On these rare occasions our actions blaze a new path into the unknown for others to follow. Jeremy Caplan (San Diego State) is doing just this with his work at the Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA’s Journey to Mars mission.
In this issue we celebrate these efforts and hope they inspire you to think about what role you play in preserving and continuing to tell the story started by three men at VMI in 1869. It’s a story we’ve been telling for close to 150 years and, due in part to the efforts of those in the pages that follow, is a story we’re confident we’ll be telling for the next 150 years.
Yours in Sigma Nu,
Drew Logsdon (Western Kentucky)
Managing Editor