Video of the event can be found here.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\nKent Stewart, director of university relations, made a short speech in which he recited a few lines from the poem \u201cA Psalm of Life\u201d by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.<\/p>\n
\u201cEd Hammond is a man who has left his footprints in the sands of time,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n
The speeches where kept short so that Hammond had time to meet and greet his guests, but Hammond, surrounded by his family, did get to the podium to thank everyone for coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a wonderful day for the University and for me,\u201d Hammond said. Earlier in the day the university announced the new president, Mirta Martin, who will be taking the position on July 1.<\/p>\n
While Hammond made his way through the crowd to the table holding the birthday cake, the band played the 1980s classic, \u201cDon\u2019t Stop Believing\u201d by Journey.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s one thing Dr. Hammond would like us to do,\u201d said Lane Weaver, director of athletic bands, \u201cand that\u2019s keep believing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hammond blew out the candles on the three-tier cake made by Chartwell\u2019s Dining Service, and everyone grabbed a piece of cake and lemonade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
– Erin L. Givens ***The writer is enrolled in Comm 240 News Reporting.*** The Fort Hays State University Band struck up the fight song as… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3398,11],"tags":[341,292,616,1038],"class_list":["post-6358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-news","category-news","tag-chartwells","tag-hammond","tag-kent-stewart","tag-mirta-martin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6358"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17629,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6358\/revisions\/17629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}