Since 1993, I have been in the ballot printing business. I am part computer programmer, part graphic designer, part digital printing manager, part capitalist. I am semi-independent: I work at home, and have my own company, but one client accounts for almost my entire portfolio.

I spend a great deal of time helping my wife, Carmen, run the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. I help with every part of the company: strategy, financial management, grant writing, and contract negotiation. Carmen and I go together to major pitch meetings. And best of all, we prepare the scripts together. We develop our own plot charts and annotated directors scripts. We started sharing those with others, and they were so popular that we are now in the process of publishing them.

I am also on the board of Goshen Friends School, which my two children attended from preschool through fifth grade. I’m currently designing a new Welcome Center (office building) for the school. I love building furniture, and strumming my six-string on the porch with my dog for audience.

Carmen and I host St. John’s Night at the theatre every year, and usually have a nice group of alumni for a pre-show cocktail party, followed by the play. I am a [St. John’s College Alumni Association] Class Chair, which translates roughly as reunion cheerleader. Also, I have so far been unable to resist requests to help with fundraising phoning, which means I also get listed on the Alumni Giving Council. And another job I love is, in the spring, phoning high school students who have applied and been accepted to St. John’s but are still uncommitted.

The main reason why I give to St. John’s College is what I like to think of as the contract between generations, a host of people in previous generations gave very generously so that I could have the privilege of attending St. John’s. Now its my turn to provide for the next generation as best I can.

But theres another reason. What if St. John’s disappeared? What if popular opinion in the U.S. went so whole hog on the STEM movement that support for St. John’s dried up and it had to close? What if America no longer had room for this institution that is the pure embodiment of the ideal of the liberal arts? I find that prospect profoundly unsettling. That is a future I do not want to see, not now, not ever. I’m sure you don’t either.

The college is healthy at the moment, but it is only ever as healthy as its private supporters choose to make it. There is no guarantor. There is no safety net. The situation reminds me of my favorite story from Plutarch (forgive me if my memory of the details is flawed). A visitor to Sparta said to the great Lycurgus, “Where are the walls? Why is your city defenseless?” For answer, Lycurgus sounded the general alarm. In short order, 10,000 men-at-arms ringed the city. Lycurgus said, “Behold the walls of Sparta.” The walls of Sparta stood undefeated for 800 years.

Well, you and I are the walls of St. John’s. It is up to us to answer the call. To keep the flame alive.