Lamar University School Of Fine Arts 
Fall 2019 COFAC Magazine 
Questions Submitted to Dr. Holly August 12, 2019

Here are my answers to your question. 

1. Why is it important for you to give?

I “learned” “giving” from my mother and father. They always had money to give, even thought they did not have a great deal of money. I have always embraced the axion attributed to Winston Churchill who said: “You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give.” 

There are two elements of giving. The first is the “discipline of giving,” which is a decision to give, even when your gift may be monetarily small at a time when you don’t have much to give. The second is the “gift of giving,” which is the joy and delight in giving. The gift of giving typically follows the learning of the discipline and most often happens when your resources are greater.

The reality is that those who do not give when they have little, seldom give when they have much. The gift of giving is driven by the gratitude one has for the blessings of life. There is no other way to express gratitude than in giving. Giving is the payment for the debt we owe to all who have contributed to our lives. It is what Paul said in Romans 13:8, “Owe no man anything but a debt of love.” It will take a lifetime of the discipline and gift of giving to satisfy our debt.

2. What’s your “return on investment” or “emotional return” for giving back.

The “return on investment” on giving, exercised either as a discipline or as a gift, is the “making of a life.” The greatest benefit is when giving is exercised anonymously, but leadership in leading others into a life of benevolence requires that we humbly share our experience of giving. Those who have had the blessing of experiencing both the discipline and the gift of giving know in experience the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

3. What does the fine arts mean to you and why do you feel this is something important

The Fine Arts, whether music, drama, speech, opera or other elements of the find arts are the heart of our lives. My career has been spent in medicine and the intersection of medicine and music includes the continuity between the physics of harmonics in music and the science of equilibrium and balance in medicine?” How are these related?  

If you place a thousand tuning forks in a room and then you “sound” one by striking it, all of the tuning forks which are of the same frequency or a multiple of that frequency will begin to vibrate. They will “sound together” This is the same principle of the orchestra, where many instruments, each of which create a different sound by a different method, together make a harmonious sound. The Greek word symphoniais transliterated into English which addresses this concept and from which we get our word “symphony.” In a composition, there may be dissonance or cacophony, or what is called a “fugue.” Yet, out of this sound, which may seem chaotic, the composer will weave a resolution into a melodic and lovely crescendo. The language of music is made up, like the language of discourse, of thesis, antitheses and ultimately a synthesis. It is the “stuff” of life itself.

In medicine, we find patients whose bodily systems have become disharmonious and/or chaotic. Our goal is to restore the balance, the equilibrium, indeed, the harmony of the body. Because music is a metaphor for medicine and medicine is a metaphor for music, treatment can often create a temporary “physical cacophony” in the life and body of the patient, which is resolved in the end by the healthful restoring of equilibrium and harmony. In oncology, we give patients whose bodies are out of balance, a “fugue” of chemotherapy, with the hope and expectation that in the end balance will be restored. In ancient religious literature, we find examples of music alone restoring mental balance and health.

Sound is produced by vibrations and music is a special sound. Most musical instruments utilize a “sounding board,” such as in the piano, to sustain, clarify, and shape the sound of the strings struck by a “hammer.” If you take a Swiss music box and hold it in your hand, it produces a pleasant sound, but if you place it on a wooden surface, the wood becomes a “sounding board,” which will project the rich sound throughout the house. “Sounding forth” is the meaning of the Greek word execheo, in which you can see and hear the word “echo.” In one document, execheo is translated “sounding board.” Without the “sounding board,’ the piano forte sounds like a harpsichord but with the sounding board, the music is melodious and beautiful.

Each of the alumni of Lamar University are the “sounding board,” the “sounding forth,” the execheo of our professors and of our School of Fine Arts. We “re-sound” the lives and message of our teachers through our lives, adding the harmony of our own lives to theirs. Without us as the “sounding board,” the knowledge and skills of our professors are limited in scope and outreach.

As individually, we are the ‘echo” of our teachers, we collectively are the symphony of them. It is as the student who felt worthless stated at the end of Glenn Holland’s career in the movie, Mr. Holand’s Opus. Now, the governor of the state. and a self-confident and accomplished woman, this once timid child said:

“Mr. Holland had a profound influence on my life and on a lot of lives I know. But I have a feeling that he considers a great part of his own life misspent. Rumor had it he was always working on this symphony of his. And this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn't rich and he isn't famous, at least not outside of our little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure.

“But he would be wrong, because I think that he's achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. We are the music of your life.”

Harmony and equilibrium, whether in music or medicine, are the physicians’ or the musicians’ or the elocutionist’s goals which are the same and often their methods overlap as well.  

I realize that each of our “instruments,” which contribute to the symphony created by the alumni of Lamar’s our School of Fine Arts will someday be silenced. And, as I often try to hear each of the instruments in the orchestra and cannot, sometimes the melody of our lives is absorbed by the whole so that we become anonymous contributors to the opus. But whether recognized or not, until that time, the honor which you the School bestows upon each of us is received with the humility of knowing that many worthy recipients will never be so honored And that humility will engendered in each of us the diligence and discipline which is the result of knowing that we have received more than we deserve and that the cost of it to each pf is was less than it is worth and that though we should work diligently for the rest of our life, we shall never satisfy the “debt of love and gratitude” which we owe to Lamar and the School of Fine Arts.

4. Can we talk about the piano? If so, what does it feel like to know how many students will be affected by this generous gift? How did you know this was something you wanted to be a part of?

Twenty years ago, my wife and I visited Steinway Hall in New York City. We saw and experienced the Steinway concert grand piano. I very much wanted to but the piano but finally decided not to. 

Only weeks after my wife and I married, I rented a piano and since then we have always had a piano in our home. I have bought pianos for each of my children from Steinway Hall.

In January of 2017, I met a piano professor from Lamar. Through our discussions, I realized that what I had wanted twenty years before - a concert grand Steinway - I could have. It would only reside at Lamar’s school of music.

The Steinway concert grand piano will be encouraging students after my wife and I have left this life. It is gratifying to know that we can be encouraging and influencing students after our lives are over.

5. You told some interesting stories at last May’s commencement ceremony. Can you share a few of those again for this article?

The following link is to the text of my address at the 2019 School Of Fine Arts Commencement: May 18, 2019 Commencement Lamar College of Fine Arts and Communication.

I met my wife in a speech class as a sophomore in 1962. In the above link, I give the details of the extemporaneous speech I have. It required a visual aide. How I did that extemporaneously is a tale worth telling.

In that same year, with no money and no job, I arranged to pay for dentures for another student. It was a classical example os practicing the discipline of giving. 54 years later, my wife and I practiced the gift of giving by purchasing a full mouth reconstruction for a stranger.

6. Any other wisdom you would like to share?

The value of a gift is not measured by its price but by what it cost you to give. Remember the biblical story of the widow who gave only pennies but was praised because she gave everything she had.