Oglethorpe University: Stone by Stone Reborn

Lyrics

[Intro]
You were a ghost first.
A memory from another county, another life.
Just a name on the humid air, a charter folded in a drawer.
A promise waiting for ground.

[Verse 1]
James Rion McKissick, he saw your bones on paper.
Sketched your spires against a sky that had never seen them.
He said, 'The Ivy League of the South'.
He said a dream could be hauled here, piece by piece, from a history already closed.
Nineteen Thirteen.
The first wagon of granite arrives.

[Chorus]
Stone by stone, you are reborn.
I hear the hammer's report on grey granite.
I taste the quarry dust hanging in the pine-scented air.
This isn't just a building.
It's an argument against forgetting.
Stone by stone, rising from the red Georgia clay.

[Verse 2]
And the hands that raised you, their names lost to the ledger.
Their sweat mixed in the mortar, their shoulders set against the weight.
They shaped the pointed arches, the cold facade.
Carved an academic quadrangle where there was only field and creek.
Each block a day's labor. Each window a piece of the sky framed.

[Chorus]
Stone by stone, you are reborn.
I hear the hammer's report on grey granite.
I taste the quarry dust hanging in the pine-scented air.
This isn't just a building.
It's an argument against forgetting.
Stone by stone, rising from the red Georgia clay.

[Bridge]
Before the country club gave this place a name.
Before Peachtree Road knew the hum of a thousand cars.
You stood here first.
An anchor dropped in time.
A Gothic promise, holding the future in your quiet, empty halls.

[Outro]
Nineteen Sixteen.
The dust begins to settle.
A bell tower waits for a bell.
And you breathe.
For the first time.
Again.