Squalicum Harbor Fishermen's Memorial
Dedication Ceremony
May 31, 1999
Transcribed by Jerri Williams
Invocation Speaker: Pastor Donel McClellan
Tom Glenn: I now present to you the reverend Donald McClellan of Bellingham’s First Congregational church who will start the dedicatory part of our ceremony. Pastor McClellan….
Pastor
McClellan:
I have been
invited to do an invocation but I know that most of you can’t hear and we
have already been invoked several times by the light breaking through the
clouds and it seems to me that any thing I could say would be a distant
second to the act of life already projecting itself and joining us.
What I would like to invoke for you is the memory which each of us shares and brings a part of. Dostoyevsky the Russian novelist was fascinated with memory. He wrote once that we have great educations but those of us who have a few memories have something more valuable than a formal education.
One who has several memories may find that they will vouch safe them through life. And even if you have one small memory, that may be enough to be your salvation.
This is memorial. It ties together memories which all of us bring. Different memories. Memories of a community stretching out in a great web.
I would like to invite you simply to stand and look at this statue and allow it to speak with you because no words can invoke what the art will evoke.
And I hope that this statue will become a kind of dock cleat to which we can tie our memory. And as we tie our individual memories they will form a net or a web which will celebrate those whom we remember but even more will acknowledge every safe return home as a gift of gratitude and will give thanks for a home port and for a fair haven.
[applause as he leaves podium]
Tom Glenn: Another special item is a presentation by the second and third grade of Whatcom Hills Waldorf School directed by Joseph Doucette. The name of the song is “The Skye Boat Song”. A very special thing. I think you will agree. "Skye Boat Song"