Stephen King welcomes 1,000 freshmen to UMaine

ORONO – In a white dress shirt and black slacks, Stephen King, Class of 1970, welcomed the University of Maine Class of 2005 to campus Sunday – and made an offer that brought 1,000 freshmen to their feet in a burst of applause.

“You are about to be ushered into the greatest intellectual banquet of your life,” King said. “Ask me back to speak when you graduate, and I’ll ask you from the podium, ‘Did you take enough?’ You will have had your chance. And I hope you tell me, ‘Yes.'”

By the end of his 30-minute speech, in which he related stories of naked freshmen and late-night poker games and offered a few sarcastic comments about movie deals, King had made clear his message – as well as his pride in his alma mater.

“My ability to think for myself and to write fearlessly came from the University of Maine,” King told the students, who were gathered in the Maine Center for the Arts.

The best-selling author was asked to be UM’s third convocation speaker, in part, because his novel “Hearts in Atlantis” was chosen as the class book for the first-year students. The practice of selecting one novel to be studied by the entire freshman class is in its 10th year, but it is the first time a King novel has been selected.

As King’s former English teacher, Burt Hatlen, pointed out, it is but one of King’s books filled with references to and images of UMaine, and one of many that have been made into a movie. A film version of “Hearts in Atlantis” opens this month.

King acknowledged he also was asked to speak because he has attained wealth and fame. But he was adamant about the worth of a UMaine education and that the university is not a “cow college.”

But he said his message is sincere on the worth of a UMaine education – and the notion that the state university is a “cow college.”

“UMaine is the intellectual equal to any school in the state, certainly Colby and Bates,” he said. “I say that as a partisan, but also as someone who has been to those schools.”

Like the master storyteller he is, King used an analogy to explain why he challenges the idea that a state college is inferior to a private college.

He told his audience of a story years ago in which rumors spread that the gum Hubba-Bubba contained spider eggs.

“I absolutely love this story,” King said. “People said the eggs would hatch in your stomach, grow there … and you would die.”

As it turned out, the widespread rumor was false, King said, but even a two-page advertisement in The New York Times did nothing to redeem sales of the gum.

“If you think of a story like this [is silly],” he said, “it’s just as silly to think that a school with this faculty would not be as good.”

King said that since his freshman year, when he was given a C-plus on his first English paper, to his senior year, when he learned to be an independent thinker while protesting the Vietnam War, he was taught that he could write using the “passions of the mind and the heart.”

King emphasized that he didn’t pursue his craft because he thought he would get rich doing so. And he said he didn’t think the students Sunday in MCA’s Hutchins Concert Hall should choose their careers that way either.

“Do it because it turns you on,” he advised.

Hatlen announced at the ceremony that the students have not seen the last of the famous graduate, as Oct. 3 has been designated Stephen King Day.