I am going to make 23sailfish happy with what I am about to say.
“There’s something in these hills,” is the reason I had to return to Clemson after I left it for a semester to go to the University of South Carolina. A lot of things were going on in my life and with my family at the time, and when I had been gone from Clemson for just a few months but then went back- there was this feeling. I cannot describe it with words any better than how others have when they explain the feeling of coming home. A reuniting with a place that is special that links many together across generations and across places in the world. There is no denying it. It is real, and “the hill” where we slid down on cardboard boxes as kids and then where we all sat and stood as freshmen during games is part of it. It’s why I had to go back after leaving.
Now you know why I don’t hate Carolina. And now you know how I know so much about both schools.
Something in These Hills
-Joe Sherman, Class of '34
Times when so many things seem to be coming unglued are disquieting times. These are disquieting times.
It always intrigues me how nearly any specific condition of nearly any specific time can find some application in a book that, essentially, was handed down to us by word of mouth through century.
I believe it says somewhere, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.”
My thoughts often wander through these upper South Carolina hills that shelter the University that forms a common bond for many thousands of people who have studied here, or taught here or worked here.
There’s something in these hills that has touched every one of them, something that has rubbed off on them in varying degrees, something that has built within the breasts of all Clemson men and women an enduring spark akin to an eternal pride.
There’s something in these hills. It was here when a handful of fledgling faculty members greeted a relatively small band of 446 students more than 80 years ago. That was shortly