In the 1970s, then-cult rock band “Genesis” lost their lead singer. Peter Gabriel opted for a solo career. The drummer, Phil Collins, chose to replace him. The move seemed to pay off well for both sides. Gabriel recorded numerous hits, while Genesis enjoyed greater success with Collins on the microphone.

A decade later, the band chose to briefly reunite for a single concert. At that event, Gabriel told Collins “you may sing the songs better than I do, but you’ll never sing them like I do.”

I read that story back in high school. I never really got what Gabriel was saying…until this year, when President Stuart Gulley announced he would leave LaGrange College for Woodward Academy.

The school went into a rigorous search mode, bringing in three fine candidates, any of whom would have done a fine job. But I got the feeling that folks liked Dan McAlexander because he reminded them of President Gulley’s charisma.

People have used all of those clichés…big shoes to fill, hard act to follow, etc. And certainly that’s applicable to President Gulley. But that doesn’t mean President-elect McAlexander can’t help LaGrange College build upon recent growth and successes. In fact, statistically, he might boost the local college to levels we’ve never seen before, the same way Phil Collins took Genesis from nightclubs to Wembley Stadium.

But there’s one thing he won’t be able to do….be a college president the way Stuart Gulley was. That’s because a president who has been around as long as our departing president has adopted something best described by eBay as “it.”

Before LaGrange College, I thought college presidents were supposed to be something like the notorious “Dean Wormer” in the bawdy film “Animal House:” stiff, rigid, uncaring….the perfect foil for everything faculty and students want in a college. And I won’t say everything at the college has been incident-free, but he’s been the “anti-Wormer,” in my opinion, without being any less professional than a college president should be.

The best-run organization in professional sports has arguably been the Pittsburgh Steelers. And they’ve done something few teams in any sport have adopted: continuity at the top. The team has only had three coaches since 1970. The team builds a system where everyone knows what is expected of them. In some ways, LaGrange College is like that, as we welcome our third president since the end of the 1970s, in a field where the average president’s tenure is little more than a U.S. Presidential term.

And it’s not just President Gulley who we’ll all miss. It’ll be a sad goodbye to Kathleen Gulley, who means so much to the First United Methodist Church, and their two great children, Andrew and Matthew. No one will ever do it like LaGrange College’s first family did these last few years.