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A Declaration on Independence

2007 Commencement Address—John Burns

     Dr. King, Mrs. Mirkin, members of the school committee, distinguished guests and colleagues, students of Wellesley High School, it is a privilege to be invited to speak to you.

     We are here this evening to honor the class of 2007. Yet, I hesitate to say that this occasion is merely about recognizing how far you have come. I will leave it to others to discuss the friendships you have formed, the tribulations you have endured and the achievements you have made. Instead I ask you to consider this moment as more than just a reflection or celebration, but as a rite of passage.  For tomorrow will mark a new chapter in each of your lives, not because you will be transformed by a piece of paper that represents the blessing of your teachers, but because the context in which you live will be radically altered. Henceforth, you will be responsible for guiding your own education, your own edification. Your life will be characterized chiefly by your own independence. Until now, your life has been carefully monitored, and somewhat managed, by people who have taken a vested interest in helping you develop your intellectual and ethical potential to prepare you for this endeavor. So it is of that future which awaits you that I wish to speak.

     Every generation faces its own challenges. Yet the challenges that are likely to be most influential in your lives are not necessarily those of which you are most aware. Politicians, the newsmedia, and primetime television are quite content to wage a campaign of shock and awe against you, to highlight dramatic and malevolent threats to the world you know. But they neglect more subtle yet enduring issues, and this omission can leave you with an incomplete view of what you face. So I would like to extend to you a paradigm for what I expect will be the enduring influences of your generation.

     Before I do this, however, I would like to share with you why I have chosen this as the subject of my remarks. About two weeks ago, my cousin Siobhan, not much older than you, entered my mother’s kitchen to unburden emotions she had been holding back for an hour or so. She had just returned from taking her mother to see her doctor, and through the tears she shared with my mother news none of us had expected to hear.

     I should tell you that her mother, my Aunt Hannah, is perhaps the most loveable member of our family. She was born a little over half a century ago in rural Ireland, where they used peat to heat their house and five children shared one mattress my grandmother sewed together from bags of flour and stuffed with straw stolen from the cattle. You might think it unusual that a person born into such circumstance would be so happy, but my Aunt Hannah has always had the gift of raising the spirits of those around her. She was one of the most active dancers at my wedding, even though in her entire life she has never heard a single, solitary note. You see, my Aunt Hannah was born deaf. And when my newborn son was seriously ill, she was the one person who could make him smile. This last fact may not mean much to you now, but if you are ever fortunate enough to have children of your own, I trust you will understand why such a person would hold such an important place in your heart, and why you would be concerned for her health and welfare.

     But I tell you of her not merely to urge you to keep a positive attitude, nor to be mindful that there are always those with greater problems than your own. Rather, it is because, like her, we are all born into circumstances beyond our control, and it is less a matter of prestige or financial success that defines who you are as it is the character you demonstrate in the face of adversity. And you shall inevitably face adversity, perhaps less obvious than that of my aunt, but no less real.
 
     It seems to me that the great challenge of your generation is that you are beset by two contradictory imperatives of globalization, one economic, the other political. On the one hand, as the world’s nations become ever more entangled, you will find that increased competition will encourage you to specialize in one occupation, to the detriment of other pursuits. You will likely find the training necessary for this sort of commitment through formal education, but perhaps you will find it elsewhere. Nevertheless, a college education is no longer a guarantee of prosperity; instead, it is more often just a prerequisite.

     Simultaneous to this investment of time and energy in developing a particular skill, you will find that your role as citizen of a democracy is becoming increasingly complex, requiring your knowledge be as broad as it is deep. For most of the last century, the typical American could imagine all of humanity consisting of essentially just three parts: the First, Second and Third Worlds. Or, if one lacked such sophistication in his thinking, the good guys, the bad guys, and the irrelevant. Today, there are no longer just two poles around which all else revolves, and the wealth that is being generated is often from this last group of countries, of late renamed “developing nations,” and they can no longer be ignored. Already they are changing the international landscape, as countries rush to validate genocide and other abuses of human rights if so doing guarantees their access to oil or other strategic resources.

     And if this growing complexity of international relations is not daunting enough, the effect the new economy is having at home is no less so. Already we see the erosion of the American middle class, a widening schism between those who have and those who have not. And though we have known since the age of Aristotle that it is upon this very  class that the stability of the entire nation rests, we have yet to figure out what to do about it.

     I do not share these “inconvenient truths” with you in order to discourage you about the future. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is precisely because of such changes that you are to be envied. You see, the easy life is boring. How your generation manages these contradictory forces may well be what defines you. Glory comes to those who face the greatest obstacles, who confront such problems with élan. But such merit must still be earned. In order to solve the great problems of your generation, much will be required of you. From you will be demanded not apathy, but energy; not mimicry, but creativity; not indifference, but humanity.

     I urge you use your independence well. Leave behind your childish ways and embrace the world for all the mysteries it has to offer. Do not waste the next few years on trivialities. Travel. Study abroad. Volunteer. Spend time learning about the world while you can. And if you are fortunate enough, as I have been, to discover a vocation, answer the call. For the world needs more people who are passionate about what they love, and fewer who hold such conviction only for what they despise.

GO

2006 Commencement Address -- David McCullough

Dr. King, Mrs. Mirkin, Mr. Keegan, Mrs. Jablonski, friends and families of the graduates, members of the Wellesley High School class of 2006, for the honor of the invitation to speak this afternoon I am very grateful. Thank you.

The occasion is commencement, a beginning. Let us not, therefore, spend too much time looking backward. Suffice to say you spent four useful and, I hope, happy years in that lovely pile of bricks, that you now know the difference between Dickens and Dickinson and recognize a pythagorean theorem when you trip over one, that you can conjugate an unAmerican verb or two and navigate most regions of the periodic table. You know, I hope, something of history and its particulars, and you understand it is (present tense) populated with people, every bit as real and vital as you are, with loves and wishes and apprehensions just like yours. I hope in that building and on its green fields you learned the indispensability of passion and practice and teamwork, that you felt both victory and defeat, that you learned something of the connection between dedication and achievement, between effort and results. You enjoyed, I hope, the peace of mind of knowing you tried your best.

But more important than any of that--and all of that is of course enormously important--I hope your experience taught you how to learn... and, more important still, why to learn--not just for the more productive and fulfilling life it will bring you, but also to help you meet your responsibilities as citizens of the planet.

As maybe you’ve noticed, the human body is designed for forward motion... eyes, ears, feet, knees, hips, all of it engineered not just to meet the future, but to stride into it, every step a leap of faith in our capacity to handle whatever we might encounter in a universe rife with opportunity and peril. We’re at our best, we human beings, moving forward. Lying around, stasis, these are a misuse of the machine, an abuse really, as unhealthy for the spirit as for the body--and no good either for the rest of us who stand to benefit from your good deeds. I’m reminded of one of those illustrated evolutionary charts in a sixth grade life science textbook, monkey to man, the full parade, a hunched little gibbon-looking thing’s first tentative steps becoming eventually Homosapien’s confident suburban power walk, each moving--compelled by instinct--into a future as unknown to him as ours is to us. But now the whizzes over in Cambridge tell us genetic evidence suggests it wasn’t necessarily such a linear forward march after all, not such clean break from our monkey forebears. There were, apparently, trial separations then... reconciliations. Of a tranquil moonlit evening, somewhere in the suddenly inappropriately named Rift Valley, it appears man and monkey reunited, looked longingly into one another’s eyes and... perhaps there was champagne... made beautiful music together... and, it seems, bouncing baby, uh, primates. “Look, mom, there’s something weird floating in the gene pool!” Which, as much as anything can, explains my brother in law.

No, our trek across the millennia has been neither direct nor without misstep. We’ve strayed, we’ve blundered, we’ve done terrible things to ourselves and our planet. But that’s looking backward and I said we wouldn’t do that. It’s now X:XX p.m., Friday, June 2, 2006 AD. You are, or will be momentarily, high school graduates--and rather than a vague abstraction waiting for you somewhere next month or next year, the rest of your life is already barreling right along. As of course it always has been. I hope you’ve learned that, too. And you have by now, I hope, developed wisdom and backbone enough to resist the seductions of comfort, of leisure, of easy satisfactions, and the thick, shiny catalogue of pop culture idiocies. You have the resolve, I hope, to make shoulds and shouldn’ts wills and won’ts. And you have enough regard for yourself to define who you are not by what you have, but by what you do. And believe me, there’s plenty to be done.

On that note, last week American Idol’s Taylor Hicks received more votes than the chief executive of the world’s preeminent democracy. At first glance this is of course disturbing... but you have to remember Mr. Hicks is at least pretty good at something. Still, we don't need Simon Whatshisname to tell us the world is a mess. The polar ice caps are melting. Glaciers are receding faster than Barry Bonds' integrity. Blistering heat waves, catastrophic hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts... they’re happening with increasing frequency, intensity and devastation--and we know why; yet still we're chugging fossil fuels like frat boys on spring break and the current administration appears more concerned about Exxon-Mobil and friends than the environment. Disease, starvation, poverty, racism, political and economic oppression, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, wars of dubious intent and otherwise, religious crackpots rampaging right and left, drug abuse, human trafficking, illiteracy, exploitation, pandemic greed, small-mindedness and incivility... Ours is a seriously afflicted planet. And this, I’ll remind you, is your world. It belongs to you as much as it belongs to anyone.
Your world in all its parts. Your, for example, Africa... where nearly half a million children are dying of AIDS every year... where in 2010, the year most of you will graduate from college, the United Nations projects there will be 40 million children orphaned because of AIDS, 40 million--that’s the population of Massachusetts times six. Today in Zimbabwe life expectancy is all of 33 years. In Sudan, an Arabic word meaning “land of the blacks,” Arabs are, with their government’s encouragement, systematically killing tribal blacks because they find them inconvenient, from infants to the elderly--and in just two years the death toll is approaching 200,000. In Congo we’re witnessing the bloodiest human conflict since World War II. An estimated 1,250 Congolese are dying every day, with totals in eight years of war approaching four million. Now this is not National Geographic-Animal Planet-Tarzan movie-click-change-the-channel-who-cares Africa. This is, again, your Africa, everyone’s Africa, the only Africa we have. These are human beings (see if this sounds familiar) every bit as real and vital as you are, with loves and wishes and apprehensions just like yours, with, I’ll add, human rights every bit as valid and compelling as yours. And if anything is going to be done about these eminently preventable crises, these outrages, those in a position to help have to step forward and do it. I nominate you.

In The Great Gatsby, which all of you read... were assigned ...F. Scott Fitzgerald laments the despoliation of the American continent and the corruption of the founding fathers’ noble ideals. Now, today, it’s worse, even, than in those sunny summer days in the Eggs: Time magazine tells us, for example, for the first time since the depths of the Depression we Americans are spending more than we earn. Today it’s life, liberty and the pursuit of stuff, the pursuit of prestige, the pursuit of whiter whites and rock-hard abs and an understatedly spectacular shingled Robert Stern rambler on a breezy Nantucket heath and in the purple-and-white crushed quahog-shell driveway a Mercedes-Benz G500 Grand Edition SUV, silver preferably, with a 4,966 cubic centimeter, 24 valve, 90 degree V8 engine and variable-focus halogen headlights with heated high-pressure washers, and multicontour premium leather seats with pneumatic side bolsters, and, in case we get lost, a GPS navigational system with an in-dash 5” color LCD screen. And when at last we can no longer amuse ourselves and wish the alarmist, party-pooping nags would just go away, when the GPS navigational system with an in-dash 5” color LCD screen cannot help us, we must deal with the consequences of how we’ve chosen to conduct our lives. “...gradually,” Nick Carraway tells us in a reflective moment at the end of the novel...

I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes--a fresh green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate with his capacity for wonder.

And a few lines later, this pessimistic conclusion: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

A lovely mournful passage, poetic, and a provocative thought--but Nick is wrong. He’s wrong 10,958 times a day. (That’s the daily average number of births in this country.) You see, Nick Carraway had no children. Nick Carraway did not have the privilege of knowing you, of seeing you in action in the classroom and on those fields and in this community. The last time in history? Every child surpasses mankind’s capacity for wonder, and every freshly minted high school graduate, too. For in each of you is the surpassing beauty of immeasurable promise, a percolating life spirit close to overflowing, boundless energy, superlative ability. Each of you represents mankind’s great hope to redress grievances, counteract stupidity, rectify injustice, relieve suffering, to lead humanity forward. In each of you is great work yet to be done, ignorance to be enlightened, malefaction to be set right, beauty and utility to be created... and, of course, in time, children of your own--and it starts all over again.

Over the next few years of your lives the focus of your education will become narrower, deeper and more specialized, and the paths you’ll follow will become clearer. Along the way work hard always. Resist, please, the temptations of exclusionary self-interest, and be careful not to confuse fulfillment with satisfaction. If you can manage it, earn your living in something you’d do for free. In everything persevere. Prize integrity. Cultivate interests. More than nice, be kind, be courteous, be respectful. Try to control your use of the word “like.” And when someone thanks you, respond with something other than “No problem.” Go easy on the salt. Watch less television. Read. Get outside. See Italy. Dream big. Love your family, even when... especially when... they make it difficult. Carpe the heck out of every diem, remembering it is your world to take care of, yes, but also to explore, to enjoy.

And, since democracies tend to get the governments they deserve, please vote... in political elections, that is. Let American Idol get along without you.

In the last of his “Four Quartets,” T.S. Eliot, a contemporary of Fitzgerald’s not noted for his optimism, wrote,

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

At the end of your exploring you will find, I hope, a world improved for your having been there, and a better understanding of where and with whom and for what reasons you began. And I’ll remind you now you began in one of the finest public school systems anywhere... public: that means paid for by a community that believes in you ...a public school system charged two hundred and twenty-eight years ago by John Adams (maybe you’ve heard of him) in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to “countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity... and all social affections and generous sentiments among the people.” Please think about that.

A school, says an old adage, is four walls with tomorrow in it. Today, here, one diploma at a time, we throw open the doors and let tomorrow free. Borne back ceaselessly into the past, Nick? No way. From this place you’ll stride forward. And where your eyes and feet and imagination take you, go. Where need beckons, go. With quiet confidence worn lightly and the courage of honorable purpose, go. With our abiding affection and admiration and every good wish, go.

David McCullough Jr
Wellesley High School Commencement
June 2, 2006

FROM THE BLEACHERS

2003 Commencement Address -- Jamie Chisum

Dr. King, Mrs. Littlefield, Mrs. Mirkin, my fellow faculty members, graduates and distinguished guests, I want to start by simply saying it is truly one of the honors of my life to be up here on this stage giving this speech. I feel a bit strange welcoming any of you to this graduation since you've all been here at least as long as I have. It was only four years ago that I came to teach at Wellesley High School, so I still feel like the one who needs the introduction. Since that's the case I know there might be some uncertainty out there about me, so before I start I'll do my best to clear up the confusions I'm aware of. First off, I'm Mr. Chisum, not Mr. Ash. I teach English. He's the good-looking guy from the guidance department. Second, I'm not really a high school student, but I did play one on TV. And thirdly, I want all my former students out there to know I'm well aware that their motivations for asking me to speak here today are rooted in a complex payback scheme for my making them go through our speech unit last year. I also want you to know the laughs on you, because now I'm the one with the microphone. You might as well get comfortable because Mr. Fantini told me I am under no time restrictions whatsoever.

A couple of years ago I was in attendance for a speech given by the poet Maya Angelou where she asked the audience a question I want to use as an opening to my speech this evening. The question was: Who Paid for you?

She said that we all sit here because someone else paid our ticket for us a long time ago. She told us that in a very real way our people were happy to sweat and bleed so that you and I could have a better life. We forget that sometimes and we shouldn't.

With that in mind I want to draw your attention to the bleachers on the other side of the football field. I want you to use your imagination with me to help me build a symbol of them. Those bleachers stand empty (besides the latecomers who couldn't get the good seats), but I would like you to imagine those stands full. I want you to fill them in your mind's eye with people who are not here today. People who love you and that you have loved. They are people you may have never met. They are they people who paid your fare. Each one of us could fill those bleachers even if we don't know all the names and faces of the people who would sit there.

In my bleachers would sit my Irish grandmother who boarded a steamship from Belfast by herself when she was 13 years old to come live with relatives she'd never met, in a country she'd never seen.

In my bleachers would sit my Cherokee/Scottish papa who raised my father and his five brothers and sisters from the red clay dirt of a Southwestern Oklahoma cotton farm.

In my bleachers would sit my pudgy, bald, Jewish track coach who convinced me to leave Western Massachusetts to come study and run at his school. A man who looked at me some years later from his death bed and asked if there was anything he could do for me.

In my bleachers also sits a man who died before I ever came to Wellesley. A Mr. Wilbury Crockett who built the very department in which I teach. A man who pushed thousands of graduates and teachers in this school. Teachers who have gone on to teach you and me try to become better selves.

At this point I would like to tell you to remember all your people who did all this work for you and go off and be productive and kind human beings, but I feel it would be a little insincere to do so. I understand that is only one reality for you.

I understand I've been a part of a culture here in Wellesley that for the past however many years has pushed you to study seemingly endless hours to give yourself better opportunities in life. Your parents and I have not always sent you the message that the most important thing in life is to be kind to others and appreciate what you have. We have taught you to be competitive. We have sometimes succeeded in making you strong and intelligent for a world that will require it of you. I hope we have always valued compassion and caring for others, but we have also valued stress and achievement at almost any cost. In this world we are constantly trying to reconcile these contrary forces in our lives. We must be kind, but we must be strong enough to survive. We must care for one another, but never be taken advantage of. We must not forget what is really important in life, but also never forget that nothing comes in this world without working to pay your own ticket.

As a humanities person I want you all to value love and kindness first, but as a human being alive in the 21st century I know you understand the difficulties of this world. A lot of graduation speeches tell you how you've spent a lot of time preparing to live in the real world. We have this habit of telling graduates they are leaving safety and entering a colder and harder place. I can't say this to you because I don't believe it to be completely true. We've all experienced the real world in our time here. When I graduated from high school I gave a speech entitled, "I know I have what it takes to become a millionaire, but I don't know if I want to use it." My number one concern was about what materialism might do to my classmates. That was in 1987 and I was too young to remember Vietnam or even Watergate. It was before Oklahoma City, before Columbine, before 9/11 and before either of the Gulf Wars. The adults in my life told me I hadn't yet experienced the real world. On some level they were right, but I can't say that to you all. It isn't the same truth. When I graduated my mind was consumed with using my talents and energies for something bigger than making a million dollars. Now I wonder if I have the right to ask you to do the same thing. Your parents and I have to answer for leaving you a world full of unique and daunting challenges. Over your school careers we've had to answer your questions about tragedies we didn't understand ourselves. I want you to know that we did our best. I hope you can understand that any mistakes we made were not on purpose.

Now if any of you were worried I was going to make it through this speech without at least one Shakespearean reference, you can stop your fretting now, because of course King Lear is a tragedy that teaches us about the transferring of burdens from one generation to the next. In the end it is Edgar from the younger generation who gets the play's final words as he stands in awe of a typical Shakespearean tragic scene. Edgar tells the audience we must,

"…speake what we feel, not what we ought to say.

The oldest hath borne most. We that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long."

But of course Edgar isn't completely right. You that are young will see so much. You will live so long. To be human is to experience the breadth and depth of life. Edgar recognized the injustice and the evil that human beings are capable of, but he also recognized it was his duty to prevent these injustices and evils from ever happening again. That is what anyone who is young at heart must do. We must remember what the generations before us went through for us to be here. We must remember we came from those people in our bleachers. You must combine the work ethic and knowledge you have been exposed to here in Wellesley with the care and consideration I personally know you all have. I can't tell you how to do it. I can't tell you when or even where you must do it. The only thing I can give you are these words from W.H. Auden:

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

Now take one last look over at your bleachers and think of those people who paid for you. Understand that as hard as the world may get for any of you some day that we human beings are capable of giving incredible gifts to one another when we are compassionate.

Thank you and congratulations.

--Jamie Chisum, June 6, 2003

2001 Commencement Address -- Jeanie Goddard

Beloved students, parents, colleagues, and dignitaries--I bring greetings to every one of you from every teacher you have ever had. As a child of the sixties, I must begin by borrowing a line from my Brooksie's speech of last year...it is a line that deserves to be shouted out at every graduation, every year... it is a line that captures how we all feel at this moment...it is a line that is wildly appropriate on this glorious evening... it is a line from Jimi Hendrix: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky."

I could winnow my speech down to 5 bits of advice: take risks, keep your old friends, read books, drink tea, and believe somehow that our Red Sox will win the World Series. I could stop with just this brief list. But why would any self-respecting English teacher willfully walk away from an open microphone and a captive audience after only a minute or two? Not I, not on my best day.

I remember keenly the spring of 1989 (you seniors were in kindergarten) when we all watched breathlessly as a lone young man, armed only with a briefcase, stepped directly in front of the line of tanks roaring into Tienanmen Square to squelch the student revolution. His courage, his willingness to risk all, stopped those tanks dead in the streets. As we watched and hoped that these glorious students with their dreams of freedom could somehow win the day, I heard a noted scholar explain the traditional role that students play in Chinese culture. He said that, in China, students have always been revered as the guardians of truth and virtue. I was stunned by the simplicity and what seems to me even now the power and accuracy of that tribute. It applies, of course, to all of you. You are our guardians of truth and virtue. Because you are not fettered by the complex obligations most adults must shoulder, because experience has not taught you caution and despair, because you believe that you just might be immortal, you can question and act and risk, and thereby see the world with a unique purity of vision. Age, alas, tempers idealism. My sense of what can be done or should be done is affected by 56 years of living and recognizing that purity is not always possible, that issues have many faces, that risk can sometimes not be worth it. Of course, I do not intend to demean the wisdom of age; after all, now that my fastball is losing its zip, wisdom is all I have to look forward to. But wisdom needs to be prodded by the urgency and singlemindedness of youth. So I urge you to seize that student role of risking all for principle, for justice, for truth. Help those of us who might be mired in the limits of our present world by dreaming the dreams of what does not yet exist.

No one can weather all this risk-taking without the support of old friends. One of the great joys of attending a public school is that your friends will forever connect you to the community, to the neighborhood, to home. Who but old friends know your history? Who else was there when you knocked over the fish tank in second grade? Who else sat with you in the middle school cafeteria when you struggled to understand the vagaries of puberty? Who else wept with you in the high school corridor when some wretched person broke your heart, or in the locker room when you lost that last game, or in your car when the college letters or the job applications did not say the words you wanted to hear? Who else laughed and conspired and pondered and complained endlessly with you about the minutia of everyday life in Wellesley? Who else sat with you in English class just last week and listened to the brave truth of your Self Paper? Who else recognized the fire at your heart's core when you faced all those adolescent ghosts and spoke your mind about who you are and who you wish to be? Who else sits with you tonight and rejoices with you that this day when the future begins has finally arrived? Everyone over 18 knows that keeping old friends requires stamina and thoughtfulness and resilience. Call, write, email, even if the calls, the letters, and the emails are not always returned. Welcome old friends, even if years of silence separate you...one of the best weekends of my life was during my 25th Needham High School reunion when I sat in our living room drinking tea with my elementary school classmates, most of whom I had not seen or heard from in 25 years.

Drinking tea...a transition to my next point...As many of you know, tea, real tea, not teabag tea, is at the center of my life. Without tea, life would be a mistake. Every decision Brooks and I have made together has been accompanied by a cup of tea. It stirs the soul...it clears the mind...it cleanses the spirit...As John Prensner reminded me this week, Jack Kerouac in his novel Dharma Bums goes even further than I do in his praise of tea: "The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy." and, just think, by drinking tea you get all that Kerouac promises, and tea drinkers never get into trouble with the Wellesley Police. So anxious am I that you come to know the delights of tea, that I have taped to the bottom of your chairs a packet with enough tea leaves to make a pot of tea to share with your soon to be old friends and, of course, with your sainted parents and grandparents, sitting in those bleachers tonight, overwhelmed with untold emotion. Reach under your seat, and you should find the packet. (do it now) Tuck it away and brew a pot of tea someday soon.

Please, please--do continue to read books....do continue to know that books teach us to become more human. They stretch the skin of our isolation. They extend our experiences and help us understand better how to live inside ourselves. The books you have read during your high school life and this year in particular, will continue to speak to you, I hope, forever. Sweet Celie will remind you never to walk by the color purple without noticing it...Tim O'Brien will insist that stories are indeed things that you carry and that these stories can save your life.... Siddhartha will say, "Listen to the river." (of course, those guys from Deliverance might just advise you to stay away from rivers at all costs).. Meursault would want to tell you something, but he might fear that it wouldn't really matter. Puck might alert you that, "the course of true love never did run smooth." Hamlet, bless his heart, will tell you what you know tonight of all nights--he will tell you that "the readiness is all." --and Odysseus, that man of pain, that man of twists and turns,--he will urge you to seek the shores of your own Ithaca.

Odysseus brings me to my last tidbit of advice: believe in the Red Sox. Like Odysseus, baseball's goal is home--home plate. Here the journey begins, and here, if the gods are good, it ends with enough runs to bring victory. When we leave home, the basepaths are fraught with dangers and hardships. Whether they be the threat of the Cyclops or the heartbreaking Yankees, we Sox fans know that since 1918 these dangers have dashed our October dreams of dancing in the street. But because we are resilient, because we hail from hardy New England stock, because believing in the Red Sox is an emblem for negotiating the disappointments of life, we return every spring to Fenway, our spiritual home, with hopeful hearts.

So--dear hearts--it is time...go on..."light out for the territory ahead of the rest"...just be sure to let us all know where you are, so we can write and send you our love and these words from Walt Whitman. This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals...despise riches, have patience and indulgence for all people, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, re-examine all you have ever been told, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very life shall be a great poem."

Thank you....i shall miss you more than words can say....

--Jeanie Goddard, June 1, 2001

2000 Commencement Address -- E. Brooks Goddard

This is one of the best days in our lives. The sun is shining, the sky is glorious, and souls are singing. Just look around you. Have you ever been in the company of so many good people before? Have you ever wondered what the incredible lightness of being felt like? It is now and you are the one. As Jimi Hendrix used to tell us, "'Cuse me while I kiss the sky."

We are commencing the rest of our lives by concluding our work at this school. You are done; I shall shortly be done. And who knew? Who knew that we'd all be here together? I can assure you that sitting there in my diaper on Belair Road in June of 1942 I had no idea that I'd be standing here, in shall we say better robes, in June of 2000. When your parents and your grandparents think back to your first birthday, did they know that you would be here today? What a wonderful adventure it has been, and now we are the graduating class of 2000. 2000!! A unique year, a unique group! And who knew?

Our years here haven't been all strawberries and cream. We have had to summon courage, and I'd like to think that courage is a quality that all of us here share. Some summoned their courage during the Depression or the Holocaust, two horrible visitations on the elder generation. Some summoned their courage during the 60s and 70s to face down the evils of racism and war. There was no sleepwalking through history then, and many of us found social justice a great rallying cry. In your classmates there has been the summoning of courage to face personal and family demons and to face the puzzlement of existence. In your self papers and speeches you wore at your hearts the fire's center to fashion some truth in the small crucible of a classroom speech. Your teachers found in those papers and speeches profound humanity. We are all faced with a circumstance I read about in a small book by Parker Palmer who was quoting an Hasidic rabbi named Zusya who said, "In the coming world, they will not ask 'Why were you not Moses.' They will ask me,'Why were you not Zusya?'" Why were you not yourself? Knowing who we are turns out to be tricky business, so tricky that we carry out this business all the time.

We have been carrying them for years, these things. We have carried them on our backs, over our shoulders, balanced on poles, gripped in our hands. We have carried them to schools, to family gatherings, on holiday trips, to summer camps, to spring trysts on Pierce Hill. We have rearranged them, stuffed them fuller, left them at our father's apartment, tried to throw them out, and bought new ones when we thought we were finally putting away childish things. But inevitably as we came to finish our last year, as we came to understand that paradox is our life, realizing that endings are really beginnings, as we contemplated our commencement before walking in to this building, we came to the frightening realization that these things we had been carrying were really ourselves. And we could shout to the uncaring universe, "I am somebody."

I hope that you will travel. Much of life is narcissistic, like spending too much time in familiar surroundings which reflect satisfaction back to us, kind of like spending too much time in an SUV. Travel makes us realize that the things we carry are not always useful, that questioning assumptions is beneficial, that life is like a multifoliate rose: many are the petals of beauty.

Teaching is one of life's great enterprises. It is writing a self paper every day. I hope you will all accept this calling if only for a year or two. Walking into a classroom to transact some mutual business is a joyful enterprise, a respectful exchange of wisdom and energy. In making hungry where most it satisfies, teaching itself is a great paradox, for we learn much more than we teach. With all your teachers from kindergarten to the present you have shared experiences with truth that reveal the multiple glories of the human condition, and yet sometimes we have to depart from a prepared text. Sometimes we have to act on whim to play hookey, to go to Gloucester or Cambridge or even Longfellow Pond.

We are all some fine people here today, and I applaud you for unpacking all those things and putting on a striking but simple red robe and joining me today to bring a chapter in our lives to an end, to say thank you to a nurturing community, and to declare that we are still going forward, phenomenally. We will send letters home, we hope that you will be proud.

2000 is a magnificent number, and reunion dates will be easy to remember. The 5th reunion will be here before you know it, the 10th, and then the 25th. I'm good for the 25th, got it down in my calendar. And now with Walt Whitman

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

--copyright E. Brooks Goddard, June 2, 2000

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO THE CLASS OF 1999

1999 Commencement Address -- Ronald S. Tiberio

Platform guests, fellow colleagues, parents and friends, and especially members of the class of 1999.

A few years ago, Spike Lee made a movie called “Do The Right Thing.” I’ve never actually seen the film but the title has always stuck in my mind. I’d like to take a few moments to talk about how to do the right thing.

Now this is not going to be a sermon on behavior. You are young adults and for the most part your behavior patterns are already set. The only comment I would make would be to the two young men who decided to blow off my class and hold a party on St. Patrick’s day. Guys, the least you could have done was give me a guest list. It would have made filling out the cut slips easier! Instead of behavior, I would like to focus on some short term tactical and long term strategic ideas on how to do the right thing.

A few years ago my wife and I visited our son who was a junior at Boston University. When we entered his room I saw a hand written sign taped over his desk. It said “You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.” When I asked him about this sign he said it referred to his German class. Although he had always liked German, this was the last required semester. The professor was boring. The readings were uninteresting. However he was smart enough to recognize that he didn’t have to like the course. He just had to do it.

Now you will all be faced with short term tasks both in college and later on as working adults. Many of them will not be interesting. Some of you probably felt this way entering my mathematics classes this year. I hope I was able to change that view. In any event, most of you managed to do the right thing. Your parents can give you a litany of tasks that they don’t like but that they do because it is the right thing. Ask them sometime about tuition bills, taxes, or the time they paid one of your traffic tickets. Thirty-one years ago, as I was about to graduate from college, I was faced with a short term task that I knew I wasn’t going to like. I could have run off to Canada or Sweden. Instead I decided to do the right thing for me. I enlisted in the military. I pray that none of you are ever faced with that choice.

My son’s quotation is probably not very good as a long term strategy. If you are going to decide to be with someone or do something for the rest of your life then in order to do the right thing, love must be a principal component.

With regard to these two of life’s tasks, I have been very lucky. I met a woman 33 years ago who has been willing to put up with my idiosyncrasies. We have been happily married for almost 29 years. As far as your vocation in life goes, I’d like to incorporate a line from Mrs. Goddard. To do the right thing, you must be passionate. I’m lucky that I have an excellent role model to look up to. My father, who turns 81 in a few days, still works five hours a day, six days a week at the same job he’s had for more than 50 years. How else do you explain the fact that I’ve gone my entire adult life, over 31 years, without missing a day of work? It is a deep love and passion for both teaching and mathematics.

So let me close with a little mathematics. You didn’t think I would talk to you today without mentioning my favorite subject. Those of you who took my discrete class know that prime numbers are the fundamental building blocks of arithmetic. They are numbers which, in a mathematical sense, cannot be broken apart. Well, 1999 is a prime number. It cannot be broken. Maybe this is a sign. I hope that your desire to learn, willingness to help others, passion about life and what it has to offer are also never broken. If you can get to my age, look back on your life and say that these qualities are still intact, then you will have done the right thing.

Thank you.

-- Wellesley High School, June 4, 1999

© 1999 Ronald S. Tiberio

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO THE CLASS OF 1980

1980 Commencement Address -- Richard J. Palmaccio

I have noticed that in asking me to speak to you today, you have at last been successful in getting me into a position in which I require some electric assistance. At least it is not in the form of a button-box calculator, and it does allow my words to be crystal clear.

Although in the company of your electric ear, I do feel a bit isolated up here without a blackboard behind me, complete with the extra wide eraser, and a vast supply of multicolored chalk. Even lacking such equipment, I will still avoid having you completely devastated with disappointment by posing a little mathematics problem. Thus you have one last opportunity to relax and enjoy it. Here is the problem. You are the one hundred eleventh graduating class. This graduation number, one hundred eleven, is unique in that each digit, one, represents each year you have spent in this school. Now, in a few years, this will be a four year high school. Here is the question. What will be the year of graduation of the class having the exactly similar distinction you have, with respect to their graduation number? Do not attempt to answer now. You can discuss the solution during a lull in festivities at your first class reunion - tonight.

Like you, I will soon be leaving Wellesley to begin a new endeavor. Unlike you, however, I have matriculated here for 14 years, rather than the traditional 3 years. This is somewhat astonishing in view of the fact that I scored one hundred on almost all of my tests. I admit there were a few rare exceptions. For those of you not knowing the story, I will share with you one of these exceptions.

One day in my first year of teaching, I administered a test - or, I should say, quiz. As I always do, I wrote out an answer sheet before the class got the quiz. when I began grading the papers that evening, I discovered I had lost my answer sheet. I wrote out another one and completed grading the papers. Later, when recording the results in the garbed, I found a nameless quiz. It was my own original answer sheet with a grade of 86!

I will remember my first year at our high school. It was also my first year of teaching. Prior to that time, my experience consisted of 6 weeks of occasional student teaching in the 1966 Wellesley Academic Summer School. Thus I was forced to learn teaching, to some extent, by the trial and error method. I owe a large debt of gratitude to all of my students from whom I have learned, and am still learning, much about teaching. Yes, learning does take place on both sides of the desk in the classroom. It has been most fulfilling to observe young people growing both as persons and as students. I have always considered it a privilege to be in a position to help people learn about that queen of the sciences - Mathematics. With the students’ help and the support of a truly wonderful staff of colleagues, my career at Wellesley has been a richly satisfying and happy one.

From my vantage point of 14 years of experience, I know that you have an uncommonly committed, talented, and dedicated teaching staff. These people must be made to feel valued by the town’s residents. I believe the citizenry generally does hold its school faculties in high esteem. Therefore, the responsibility for transmitting this attitude of appreciation definitely rests with the School Committee and the Central Office Administration.

Today it is fitting to consider the future - your future. No doubt you have heard it said that the young are the hope of the future. I do sincerely believe this to be the truth. Soon, many of you will be entering positions of leadership. Even a surface analysis of the problems facing our country today, and the attempts to solve them, clearly indicates the acute need for good quality leadership in all spheres of endeavor. We of older generations are not leaving you a legacy of which we can be fully proud. It is now your challenge to rectify this situation for your children's generation.

To help enable you to begin to meet this challenge successfully, you have earned the high school diploma you are about to receive. Most of you will continue a formal education in college, but all of you will continue to grow as persons, nurtured and enriched by the experiences which await you. You are our finest national resource. We have faith and confidence in you. You have every potential to effect a better, more harmonious society. Modern technology can provide a dazzling array of tools, but it requires men and women of distinction to employ them for the common good. You are these people. Thus, yours is this responsibility.

You are now in the commencement of your adulthood. Value highly the pursuit of excellence in whatever you do, be it lofty or humble. Never lose an opportunity to learn, for learning makes you a more sensitive and fully aware person. Do not allow yourselves to become so busy and preoccupied, that you never take time for the full enjoyment of the wonders and beauties about us. There are marvels everywhere, even in the blades of grass at your feet. The process of photosynthesis occurring within them is a mystery, whose complete understanding still eludes the world’s best chemists. Yet without this process our lives would be impossible.

Each of you is a universe of profound depth. Consider first the living cell. It is a world of seemingly countless atoms, forming myriad molecules, arranged in exquisite order. The cell maintains its own living individuality. The body is a galaxy of these worlds, cooperating to form a new, far grander entity. Then there is the mind, with its capability to reflect on past and present, with its awesome abilities to imagine the future, to ponder itself, and to create. Finally, crowning all of these glories, there is that which is greater than the sum of these parts - The Fathomless Human Personality. It is so multi-dimensional that one continually acquires knowledge about his own throughout an entire lifetime.

Therefore, appreciate and respect yourselves and the people around you. Do not hesitate to give of yourselves to others. You are the most precious gift you can offer. Continue to develop your talents to the fullest extent. You will thus be better empowered to enrich other lives, and in doing so, will live more abundantly your own. Keep yourselves well - mentally and physically - for you will need all your capabilities and energies for whatever destiny holds for you.

I wish to thank you for the high honor of being asked to address you this evening. I value it deeply, and will cherish this occasion always. As I consider having been your commencement speaker a parting blessing from you, I should like to reciprocate by closing my remarks with the following blessing, taken from an old Irish text, which expresses my sentiments towards you.

May the blessing of light be upon you,
Light without and light within.

May the blessed sun shine warm
Upon your face,
And warm your heart till it glows
Like a great peat fire,
So the stranger may come
And warm himself at it,
And also a friend.

May you ever have a kindly greeting
From them you pass,
As you are going along the roads of life.

May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

--Richard J. Palmaccio, June 6, 1980

Last updated 6/12/06