Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Abington is a small suburb of Philadelphia. Its sole high school is named -- logically -- Abington high school. Or, rather, was.
According to the New York Times, a Wall Street billionaire has generously donated $25 million to the school for renovation purposes. But he has imposed a few small conditions -- (1) the school would be renamed after him; (2) his portrait would be displayed prominently in the building; (3) various areas of the school would be named after his twin brothers; and (4) he would have final approval of the school's new logo.
The school board accepted the conditions. And the money. A community's explosion of outrage has ensued.
I'm tempted to laugh, but "people who live in glass houses," etc." My own high school was named after its lumber baron founder. But then, so was the town itself. Both town and high school, along with most of the public buildings in town, were the inspiration -- and beneficiaries -- of the founder. The nexus between founder and high school was at least organic.
The Times article made me wonder. What goes through the mind of a person who demands that the institution benefitting from his generosity be named after him? (For that matter, what goes through the mind of a man who names every hotel and resort he owns after himself?)
I suppose in part it's just a way of bragging about one's success, like driving around in an overpriced car. But for many, I suspect -- especially those who seek to put their names on schools or opera houses or other institutions that will survive long into the future -- it's a hankering after immortality. "Years from now," the philanthropist tells himself, "the public will remember me and my well-lived life as the cause of their great good fortune."
Hey, even I like to read published appellate decisions that have my name affixed to them as counsel! I dream of law students two centuries from now pondering in their minds -- who was this brilliant lawyer who triumphed in this important case regarding a car's failure to stop at a red light?
It's all illusory, of course. Even if the philanthropist's name isn't replaced after his death by the name of someone with even more money -- remember poor Avery Fisher and his hall at Lincoln Center? -- his pre-death hopes and dreams will still eventually join his body as dust.
Percy Shelley wrote his famous sonnet Ozymandias about a great Egyptian pharaoh who built a huge statue of himself in order to remind the future of his power and greatness. A leader to be reckoned with. A household word. And today -- nothing left but an inscription half covered by the desert's shifting sands.
I hope the Wall Street billionaire's true motivation is to improve Abington high school. He can buy that for $25 million. Immortality is much more expensive. In fact, priceless.
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