by David Melton
Just a few days ago, our chancellor, our much-loved former president, and the best friend Boston Baptist College has ever had, Dr. Harry Boyle, went to Heaven. He had fought numerous serious health issues for years, but his passing still caught us off guard. Just days earlier we joked to each other on the phone. Now, days after his death, I just don’t know what to say.
I want you to know what a contribution Bro. Boyle made. I would like to find some way to explain it. You surely know that he was the president of our college for almost 20 years. Those were largely very difficult years, trying to mature our college to stability. The short of it is that he simply would not let us fail. As I have thought about it since that Thursday morning, I have come to conclude that perhaps no other person had the potential (humanly speaking) to grow up Boston Baptist College. Bro. Boyle had the strength of his own ministry at Grace Baptist Church in Portland, Maine, he had the reputation among preachers, he had the strength and tenacity to see it through, and he had the heart to make it happen. It is all even more impressive to me now, somehow, than it has ever been before. I wish I could explain it better to you, but I just don’t know what to say.
Our campus is just not the same. I cannot really grasp yet that Bro. Boyle will never come back to his office across the hall, that he will never poke his head in my door and say, “Hey, buddy!” with that big smile of his, that he will never again mingle again with our students, poking guys in the ribs, giving grandfatherly hugs to young ladies, creating smiles all around. I wish I had some way to do justice in explaining the hole this leaves in our college family. I just don’t know what to say.
I am already thinking about commencement in May. I have no memory, none, of a graduate from this college not standing on the platform getting a diploma from Dr. Boyle. I still have to figure out how somebody can finish at Boston without that. He stood there handing out diplomas with a particular joy, and then if the graduate was from Portland, oh boy, forget protocol. I remember one young lady in particular… I wouldn’t be surprised if Bro. Boyle had paid for most of her education personally. She didn’t get a handshake with her diploma… I thought they would squeeze each other in half — they were both so full of joy. What am I supposed to do to make up for that experience for the class of 2010 and all those who come after? I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say.
How about this, who of the Boston students who went to Italy on a study trip with Bro. Boyle can ever forget him reading II Timothy 4 to us in the ruins of Nero’s Judgment Hall on the top of the Palatine Hill in Rome? His voice cracked as he read, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” Nobody who was there will ever forget that memory. I cannot tell you what that moment was like.
Harry Boyle was a preacher’s preacher. He was a people’s pastor. Boston Baptist College will forever be indebted to Grace Baptist for sharing Pastor Boyle with us. His impact on staff and students alike simply cannot be measured — really it was his impact on everybody he met. My 13-year-old, Samuel, had a special friendship with Dr. Boyle. Sam publicly proclaimed at a banquet last year that he was Dr. Boyle’s favorite. People laughed, but they did have something really cool between them. A young boy and a legend. I picked up Samuel from school the day Dr. Boyle went to be with the Lord, still grasping for some way to tell my son the news. Samuel jumped in the car, and before I could get a syllable through the lump in my throat, my boy said, “I know, I got an email on my phone.” Then the tears came — for both of us, and countless others around the globe. None of us know what to say. There just are no words.