Although the formal dedication of Alumni Memorial was held as part of the 1934 Homecoming, the president of the university, James D. Hoskins (then dean of the university), gave the following speech at the first chapel meeting on October 26, 1932:
We have met today for the first time in this beautiful building erected by the alumni and the State of Tennessee as a memorial to those students who made the supreme sacrifice in the Spanish-American and World Wars.
Well do I remember the heroes of both wars. The genial and affable McCorkle, Bernard, Triplett, and Barton of the Spanish-American War, and well do I remember those boys who came to my office to say good-by for the last time as they started overseas ready to Pour out the red, sweet wine of youth; give up the years to be; / Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene / That men call age.
The day before his death at El Caney, McCorkle wrote to his wife: “Tomorrow we shall engage in battle. I do not expect to do anything great, but I will do my duty.” This message, a transcript from the heart of this University through one of her sons, I pass on to you.
When the call of the Great War came, in her quick and eager response, the University of Tennessee, true to the traditions of the Volunteer State, was the first among the first. Hundreds of her sons hurried to the first training camps.
It is fanciful for us to think today that the ancient heroes of freedom, the heroes of Thermopylae, Runnymede, Bunker Hill and the rest, gave to those boys who had read the old stories amid the beauties of this campus, the torch of the eternal task “to carry on” to a new and greater victory.
Let us as we are met today reaffirm in a spirit of solemn and devoted consecration our undiminished faith in the principles of freedom, justice and equality on which this nation was founded and out of which it has grown in beauty and strength to its present power. The love of a man for the land of his birth and the institutions of his father is the all-conquering grace of the truly patriotic heart. Such patriotism was incarnate in these boys. When they were leaving, the Hill was the University’s Calvary; with this memorial building today it becomes the Mount of Transfiguration.
Their Alma Mater sent them forth as a mother of sorrows, but today she takes pride in this building as a mother of exceeding great joy. To her, those boys are her immortal boys, ever young and fair. To her, the holy morning of their lives shades not into the darkness of the night, but lightens into the eternal youth and beauty of the stars. For her “great deeds, and the patriotic impulse that glorified them, will be an inspiration in her eternal business of making for the service of the State noble-hearted men!”