Stop 1: Front of Institute

Winthrop once spent an extended period on restricted activity, due to a childhood ailment, and learned that he could burn paper or wood by concentrating the sun’s rays using a flashlight lens. He took his lens and burned a verse of Edgar Guest’s poem “It Couldn’t Be Done” into a clean piece of plywood.

Winthrop Rockefeller, in “A Letter To My Son”

“I think that is one of the truest and most useful bits of philosophy that has come into my life, and I have thought of it many times when people tried to tell me why things couldn’t be done. I still have that piece of plywood on my office wall.”

“It Couldn’t Be Done” by Edgar Albert Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done

But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin

On his face. If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

That couldn’t be done, and he did it!