Samuel Ullman Bio And Museum

Samuel Ullman

Samuel Ullman was born in Germany in 1840. At the age of eleven, he and his family moved to the United States and settled in Mississippi. In 1884, Ullman moved to the young city of Birmingham, Alabama, and was immediately placed on the city's first board of education.

During his eighteen years of service, he advocated educational benefits for black children similar to those provided for whites. In addition to his numerous community activities, Ullman also served as president and then lay rabbi of the city's reform congregation at Temple Emanu-El. 

In his retirement, he wrote a poetic essay entitled “Youth.” It was General Douglas MacArthur who facilitated Ullman's popularity as a poet - he hung a framed copy of a version of Ullman's poem "Youth" on the wall of his office in Tokyo and often quoted from the poem in his speeches. Through MacArthur's influence, the people of Japan discovered "Youth" and became curious about the poem's author.

The Samuel Ullman Museum

The Samuel Ullman Museum is located at 2150 15th Avenue South, Birmingham, Alabama.

Reflecting the admiration of the Japanese people for Mr. Ullman and his inspiring poetry, a Japanese business executive working in Alabama visited Birmingham in 1992 and expressed the desire to see the erstwhile Ullman residence where the poet had spent the last 17 years of his life and where he had penned his most significant work. Mr. Kenji(Ken) Awakura, then First Vice President of The Japan-America Society of Alabama (JASA), finding that the house had fallen into disrepair, was inspired with a vision of what the house could become if restored and operated as a museum.

Mr. Awakura spearheaded a JASA-led fund raising effort in Japan and the United States, resulting in corporate and personal contributions which were used to purchase and restore the property. The property was presented to The UAB Educational Foundation by JASA in 1993, and the Ullman Museum, displaying materials, artifacts, and furniture donated by members of the Ullman family, officially opened on March 21, 1994.
Additional generous gifts to JASA by the Alabama Power Foundation and Mr. Wyatt Rushton Haskell, a prominent Birmingham attorney and Ullman devotee, were invested to ensure the ongoing maintenance and improvements of the museum.

Read more about the Samuel Ullman Museum here.
A documentary on Samuel Ullman’s history is available online for free here.

"Youth"

Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

青春

原作 サミュエル・ウルマン　翻訳 岡田 義夫

青春とは人生のある期間をいうのではなく、心の様相をいうのだ。

すぐれた創造力、たくましき意志、炎ゆる情熱怯懦をしりぞける勇猛心、
容易をふりすてる冒険心
こういう様相を青春というのだ。
年を重ねただけでは人は老いない。

理想を失うときにはじめて老いがくる。
歳月は皮膚のしわを増すが、情熱をう失う時に精神はしぼむ。

苦悶や、狐疑や、不安、恐怖、失望、
こういうものこそ、あたかも長年月のごとく人を老いさせ、
精気ある魂をも芥に帰せしめてしまう。

年は七十であろうと十六であろうと、その胸中に抱き得るものはなにか。
いわく驚異への愛慕心、空にきらめく星辰、その輝きにも似たる
事物や思想に対する欽仰、事に処する剛毅な挑戦、
小児のごとく求めてやまぬ探求心、人生への歓喜と興味。

人は信念とともに若く、疑惑とともに老ゆる。
人は自信とともに若く、恐怖とともに老ゆる。
希望ある限り若く、失望とともに老い朽ちる。

大地より、神より、人より、美と喜悦、勇気と壮大、
そして偉力の霊感を受ける限り、人は若さを失わない。
これらの霊感が絶え、悲歎の白雪が人の心の奥までもおおいつくし、
皮肉の厚氷がこれを固くとざすに至れば、
この時にこそ人はまったくに老いて、神の憐れみを乞うるほかはなくなる。