PU Reunion June 8, 2024

Held on the campus of Northern Oklahoma College in Enid, Oklahoma (Formerly Phillips University)

Rev. Dr. Becky Zahller McNeil (PU class of ’82)

Creator of wide-blue skies, flat red earth, and vivid green or golden glowing wheat,

Once upon a time, your faithful servants planted a garden to the east of Enid and named it Phillips University.

And it was very good.

We, whose lives were changed, whose minds were opened, whose thinking was challenged in one class, by one professor in particular, or by all of them, all together,

We, who were challenged and stretched and grew through relationships and encounters with classmates and roommates in Clay Hall, Earl Butts, and Lankard, in intramurals, clubs, and student senate, on the Baseball diamond or the basketball court, in Blivens’ Chapel, at convocations, in the Hub, and the Kazoo Zoo, in choirs, in the Enid Phillips Symphony,

We, who laughed here and cried here,

We, who experienced true love and perhaps first heartbreak here,

We, who explored your creation together at Science Camp, on a Semester in Sweden, on a geology class field trip,

We, who made friends for a lifetime here,

We, who are very proud of what we accomplished here,

(and, we, who must admit, there are, perhaps, some shenanigans for which we have already or should still repent of, and lessons that were learned the hard way outside of classes),

We, who grieve the deaths of those from our time here who have gone before us,

We Pause today to give you thanks as we remember with deep gratitude

all that was indeed very good during our time here, and all that has been very good in our lives after leaving here that was made possible, in part, by the glories of our Phillips U.

Now that Phillips lives on in us, in sacred memory and lives dedicated to the wholeness of all creation, Bless us, that we may be faithful to the legacy that is ours, that lives on through us and through those whose lives we have enriched.

Bless the work of this Alumni Association that the stories of the little garden to the east of Enid will continue to flourish and grow through us, through seeds of the garden now scattered and sown.

In Jesus’ name, we pray,

Amen.