Shane O'Dea has been the public orator for Memorial University since 1995. In this capacity he delivers public orations on Honour Roll recipients during the annual convocation ceremony.
In 2000, Memorial University of Newfoundland bestowed Honourary Degrees on a quartet of Newfoundland actors and Codco members: Andy Jones, Mary Walsh, Greg Malone and Cathy Jones.
Here is what Shane O'Dea wrote in his Oration honouring Andrew Jordan Jones:
"To speak of fools is to step into a world of paradox, a world of distorting mirrors. And for those of us who hold seriousness and wisdom in high esteem, to take such a step is to hold ourselves open to reproach. Chancellor, on this stage we commonly, or uncommonly if that would be your preference, honour philanthropists and those who have served their communities, scholars and those who have accomplished great things. To be a fool is to be none of these, yet all. However, if we do not honour fools we are but fools ourselves for we fail in our fooling to recognize the folly of our foolishness. Thus needs we be careful and move only at a snail's pace, to use an old analogy, or picosecond by picosecond to use a new — a new analogy that is precisely of the precision we would achieve in uniting our wisdom with the candidate's accomplishment.
And so, these words disported, we proceed to the dissection of merit. This man was last in and first out of this quartet. Entering late, he left early because of a dispute on a matter of principle with the CBC. He felt that the CBC was censoring him while he savagely censured an institution that had cultivated him. But he had done this earlier with the vehement madness of Father Dinn, who preached to little children on the sinfulness of little children. And here lies the paradox, for Andrew Jones was born on the feast-day of St. Ita, that holy woman of Limerick, foundress of a school for little boys where was taught “Purity of heart [and] simplicity of life with religion”; where was taught St. Brendan who brought Christ and European civilization to these our shores. And what have we here — a man who exposes the wickedness of the priests and sets in train the attitudes that bring down the Roman Church. This is merit? It is — in this world of distorting mirrors — for it involves the candidate's pure and simple notions of religion; an expectation which, when violated, made him as the saviour amid the money changers in the temple: riotous with rage turned wisdom in ridicule.
Mr. Chancellor, these contradictions evaporate when we accept that Andy Jones is at heart a traditionalist. How else could he pen those subtly moving, remarkably deft “Letters from Uncle Val” which we used to hear every Saturday morning, and which were so affecting that many listeners wrote to Val as if he were a real person. Why else does he render our folktales into children's theatre in Jack-Five-Oh? This is the man who, squirrel-like, maintained the CODCO office and ensured that, when it closed down, all the records were deposited at the Centre for Newfoundland Studies. This is the man who, ejected from the St. Bon's choir for lack of voice, found vocation as an altar boy and so became enamoured of ritual because he knew, with Yeats, that “in custom and in ceremony/ Are innocence and beauty born.” This is a man who, watching the LSPU Hall become a place of discord, helped remake it as the community-based Resource Centre for the Arts. He was one of those who shaped our national consciousness by humour; who made the comedy of our lives, our pride, and so turned back the vectors of ridicule. And this service was recognized when he was made a member of the Arts Council Hall of Honour in 1993. I present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of doctor of letters (honoris causa), a man with a sense of posterity and place, a man with a deep sense of his own country, his Newfoundland, Andrew Jordan Jones."
