By Larry Mellichamp
Editor’s Note: Here is Dr. Larry Mellichamp’s farewell speech at the 2022 Cullowhee Native Plant Conference. Find a link to the video at the end of this post. Other links and resources appear at the end of this Commemorative Native Plant News.
I thank the steering committee for letting me have five minutes and they called it lunch.
I want to talk to you about a clarification, a little reminiscence, and a word of inspiration. Dan Patello and I are probably the only ones here who’ve been coming for forty years.
Stop and Talk With Me When You Can
I’ve loved every minute of it and every person I’ve met here. I need to let you all know so there won’t be any secrets; I have terminal cancer. This will probably be my last time here. And I’ll miss you all. And what I want to say is: Don’t be afraid to come talk to me here. It may be the last time I can sign books and talk with you. I’m not contagious. I’m not venomous. And since I stopped chemotherapy three months ago, I’m not poisonous. So stop and talk to me wherever you can. I’ll be around these whole days [at Cullowhee] – I’m leading a little trip in the morning, probably my last time I’ll be able to physically walk in the woods to see things out in the wild.
I want to remember four special things as a reminiscence for those of you who have been coming a long time here at Cullowhee. The first one of these was in 1995 when I gave a demo on making a bog garden. And I said: “I’m getting hot. I need to take my pants off.” So I proceeded to unzip my lower part of my pants. There’s a YouTube video on that that’s still circulating on the internet.
The second reminiscence was when I was director in ‘03. We gave out lighted pens for everyone. The night we did that, everybody held up their lighted pens. A ray of 400 people something to be seen. Bobby Hensley had become associate director [of Continuing Education, Division of Educational Outreach at Western Carolina University, location of the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference]. I would go to him and ask him for all kinds of money for things whenI was director. And he would say we can’t do that. But he always found a way to do whatever I wanted, just at a lower price. So he was willing to buy us the lighted pens.
That same year at the Friday night picnic, of all surprises, Mary Painter, who was entertainment director, asked me what I wanted special for the picnic. So I said, “I like tiramisu. Let’s have tiramisu for dessert.” That’s the equivalent of asking for some personalized painted donuts as if we were all English royalty. Well lo and behold that night at the picnic there was the tiramisu. For everyone. Somehow Bobby found the money for that.
The final thing I want you to remember is that we had just moved into this building two years earlier and it was always cold. You had to wear two or three layers of clothes. Not everybody remembered to do that. One day, I went down to the main office and there were all the workers there. I went into the control room. And I asked ,’Which one of these buttons am I supposed to push to make it warmer in there?’ You never saw somebody get up from behind the desk so fast to come up to see what buttons I had pushed in the control room. Well, I hadn’t pushed any buttons but we were warmer that year. They came out and did something.
Encouragement to Future Directors
So this is my encouragement to future directors: “Don’t Fear. Just go try to do something and see what you can get.”
So I’ve been blown away by the enthusiasm of the young people, talks that I’ve heard, the students I’ve seen, the interns. I think Cullowhee is going to have a great future. I would encourage you to continue for another 40 years. I wish you all a bright future.
Do All the Things You Can Do
Keep coming, keep supporting this tremendous amount of work that’s built up since forty years ago. We were just beginning – that was the beginning of the native plant movement, the first Cullowhee meetings way back then. I think it’s come a long way to see all the results of that. I wish you all very well. Keep up the good work. Support environmental education. Thank you for 40 years of memories. I’ll stop now. I’ll miss you all when I’m gone. Thank you.