In the language of popular music, to "carry a torch" is to sing a sad song of a lost love. The torch I carry is a very different one, and it sings a glad song of light and life and love, past, present and to be.

My life, before I started to carry a torch, had been a dim search which needed some extra light to help me see, not things which were lost or distant or unattainable, but close at hand, waiting only for my recognition, acceptance and enjoyment.

In the days of my dim search I sought for happiness among many winding ways -- in travel, people, work, knowledge and pleasure, sometimes touching briefly only to lose it again.

I thought of happiness as something to get. With the light of a torch I learned it is something to have, and to give.

Its talisman is love. Once our torch is lighted by that flame the dim search ends. There is nothing to seek. All is given. We have but to accept and enjoy and keep the flame bright by giving to others. Each day our fortune is magically renewed with 24 golden hours to live, to give and enjoy. It is a fortune which must be shared to make us rich.

It is this sharing which endears to us the fellowship of Beta Sigma Phi.

Together we know that the light is not only for our own day and our own way but for all our dear ones, for the world about us, and for those who follow us. How far the light has carried from that first Torch lighted in 1931! How brightly it shines today, and shall shine forever more because love is eternal. How gratefully glad I am that I carry a torch.