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Commencement address to the Class of 2006
May 22, 2006 8:40 AM
By Tannika King - Faculty
Read the Commencement address given by Jim Hendrix, Darlington's former interim president, Saturday, May 20, during the graduation ceremony:
Mr. Whitworth, Mr. Rhodes, faculty and staff members; Mr. Robinson and other members of the Board of Trustees; honored members of the Class of 2006; parents, relatives, and friends; I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of this special day.
Graduates, this is a day when we honor you. But your kind invitation to share a few words does me great honor. Thank you. I hope you know that you hold a special place in my heart, and I will always cherish the memories of the year I was privileged to share with you.
Giving a graduation speech is a daunting task, especially when you have sat through as many as I have! If my math is correct I have listened to 39 of them, from secondary schools to undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools: 3 of my own; 8 for my 3 children; and 28 in institutions where I was teaching. Now let me be candid – I do not remember much of any of the 39 so I certainly have no illusions about the impact of my comments today!
One I do clearly recall, however, is Mr. Jere Drummond’s at Darlington’s graduation last year. Mr. Drummond, a native of Rome, gave moving testimony as to the life changing impact of his years at this school. He told of his upbringing in this fine town and of his dad, who ran a local service station. College education was not something familiar to Mr. Drummond’s family and would not have been, in his opinion, something that would have been in his future had it not been for Darlington. Now, many years later, he has recently retired from a highly successful career at Bell South, and is a much-honored businessman, philanthropist, civic volunteer, and long serving member of Darlington’s Board of Trustees. He has made this school and the world better places and he credits much of his success to the values and education imparted to him by Darlington.
I heard this sort of story over and over during my year at Darlington. I’ve heard it from Mr. Robinson, who has so ably chaired the Darlington Board of Trustees for the past three years; from Mr. George Johnson, who is co-leading the Centennial Campaign; from Mrs. Joyce Riddle Neely, a key Board member and successful attorney and businesswoman; from Mr. Moss and Mr. Neville; from Mr. John Thatcher, was recently made the largest gift to Darlington in the history of the school. For one hundred years this institution has had this kind of life changing impact.
And so, I suspect, will be the case with each of you: It is not something that you likely reflect upon on this special day, at this stage of your lives, but that will come. I want to ask you to reflect on this for a moment and will borrow a 19th century title to prod your thoughts.
The American Utopian novelist Edward Bellamy published a volume in 1888 entitled Looking Backward. Bellamy looked ahead 112 years in his novel, to his vision of the U.S. in the year 2000. I ask you today to think ahead only a quarter of a century. Imagine yourself, at your Darlington 25th year reunion in 2031, “looking backward” at this day, and your years at this school. By then you will have dispersed to the 4 corners of this rapidly shrinking world, and will be engaged in a wide range of businesses and professions, many of which do not yet exist. Some of you will live in Rome and will have children at Darlington. What will your memories be in 2031? Which teachers, coaches, House Masters, and staff members will, from your vantage point of 25 years hence, be the ones you deem to have had the most influence on you? Whatever those answers might be, I predict that 2031 will see you in the midst of successful lives; ones that I hope will be filled with happiness, and with service to others. And is it this service component I want to stress.
All of us here today are people of privilege and with such privilege comes responsibility. The fact that we each have food in our refrigerators, roofs overhead, and a place to sleep makes us more wealthy than 75 percent of the people on this Earth; the reality that we can attend a church, synagogue, mosque or other place of our choice of worship without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, makes us more blessed than three billion people in the world; if we have a bank account, however small, some money in our wallet or purse, or even loose change on our dresser, we are among the wealthiest 8 percent in the world; and the fact that we all can read the graduation day program makes us more blessed than the two billion people in the world who can not read at all. As the Good Book has it “to those to whom much is given much is asked.” You are the generation that must solve the challenging and complex problems of the present and future, the problems of water, food supply, energy, poverty, environmental degradation, ecclesiastical contentiousness, health care, and on and on.
You are destined for success in addressing these issues, and more. What Darlington, your parents, and other have given you are the foundations of the tools that you will hone in higher education, and beyond – wisdom, skills and values to address the challenges of our turbulent, rapidly changing world. And, as with Mr. Drummond, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Johnson, Mrs. Neely, Mr. Moss, Mr. Neville, Mr. Thatcher, and so many others, I am confident that you will attribute much of what you accomplish to your years at Darlington.
Let me close with a reminiscence from last year. There are many special rituals and events in the course of a Darlington School year, but surely one of the most memorable is the annual Lessons and Carols service. I love the entirety of that event, but especially the singing of that beautiful carol, “O, Holy Night.” The first two lines of the second stanza always move me. You may recall the words: “For truly He taught us to love one another; His law is love and His gospel is peace.”
So go forth and love one another, here and in the world at large. And as you live by that law of love, may your gospel always be peace. Thank you, congratulations, and God Bless.
Mr. Whitworth, Mr. Rhodes, faculty and staff members; Mr. Robinson and other members of the Board of Trustees; honored members of the Class of 2006; parents, relatives, and friends; I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of this special day.
Graduates, this is a day when we honor you. But your kind invitation to share a few words does me great honor. Thank you. I hope you know that you hold a special place in my heart, and I will always cherish the memories of the year I was privileged to share with you.
Giving a graduation speech is a daunting task, especially when you have sat through as many as I have! If my math is correct I have listened to 39 of them, from secondary schools to undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools: 3 of my own; 8 for my 3 children; and 28 in institutions where I was teaching. Now let me be candid – I do not remember much of any of the 39 so I certainly have no illusions about the impact of my comments today!
One I do clearly recall, however, is Mr. Jere Drummond’s at Darlington’s graduation last year. Mr. Drummond, a native of Rome, gave moving testimony as to the life changing impact of his years at this school. He told of his upbringing in this fine town and of his dad, who ran a local service station. College education was not something familiar to Mr. Drummond’s family and would not have been, in his opinion, something that would have been in his future had it not been for Darlington. Now, many years later, he has recently retired from a highly successful career at Bell South, and is a much-honored businessman, philanthropist, civic volunteer, and long serving member of Darlington’s Board of Trustees. He has made this school and the world better places and he credits much of his success to the values and education imparted to him by Darlington.
I heard this sort of story over and over during my year at Darlington. I’ve heard it from Mr. Robinson, who has so ably chaired the Darlington Board of Trustees for the past three years; from Mr. George Johnson, who is co-leading the Centennial Campaign; from Mrs. Joyce Riddle Neely, a key Board member and successful attorney and businesswoman; from Mr. Moss and Mr. Neville; from Mr. John Thatcher, was recently made the largest gift to Darlington in the history of the school. For one hundred years this institution has had this kind of life changing impact.
And so, I suspect, will be the case with each of you: It is not something that you likely reflect upon on this special day, at this stage of your lives, but that will come. I want to ask you to reflect on this for a moment and will borrow a 19th century title to prod your thoughts.
The American Utopian novelist Edward Bellamy published a volume in 1888 entitled Looking Backward. Bellamy looked ahead 112 years in his novel, to his vision of the U.S. in the year 2000. I ask you today to think ahead only a quarter of a century. Imagine yourself, at your Darlington 25th year reunion in 2031, “looking backward” at this day, and your years at this school. By then you will have dispersed to the 4 corners of this rapidly shrinking world, and will be engaged in a wide range of businesses and professions, many of which do not yet exist. Some of you will live in Rome and will have children at Darlington. What will your memories be in 2031? Which teachers, coaches, House Masters, and staff members will, from your vantage point of 25 years hence, be the ones you deem to have had the most influence on you? Whatever those answers might be, I predict that 2031 will see you in the midst of successful lives; ones that I hope will be filled with happiness, and with service to others. And is it this service component I want to stress.
All of us here today are people of privilege and with such privilege comes responsibility. The fact that we each have food in our refrigerators, roofs overhead, and a place to sleep makes us more wealthy than 75 percent of the people on this Earth; the reality that we can attend a church, synagogue, mosque or other place of our choice of worship without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, makes us more blessed than three billion people in the world; if we have a bank account, however small, some money in our wallet or purse, or even loose change on our dresser, we are among the wealthiest 8 percent in the world; and the fact that we all can read the graduation day program makes us more blessed than the two billion people in the world who can not read at all. As the Good Book has it “to those to whom much is given much is asked.” You are the generation that must solve the challenging and complex problems of the present and future, the problems of water, food supply, energy, poverty, environmental degradation, ecclesiastical contentiousness, health care, and on and on.
You are destined for success in addressing these issues, and more. What Darlington, your parents, and other have given you are the foundations of the tools that you will hone in higher education, and beyond – wisdom, skills and values to address the challenges of our turbulent, rapidly changing world. And, as with Mr. Drummond, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Johnson, Mrs. Neely, Mr. Moss, Mr. Neville, Mr. Thatcher, and so many others, I am confident that you will attribute much of what you accomplish to your years at Darlington.
Let me close with a reminiscence from last year. There are many special rituals and events in the course of a Darlington School year, but surely one of the most memorable is the annual Lessons and Carols service. I love the entirety of that event, but especially the singing of that beautiful carol, “O, Holy Night.” The first two lines of the second stanza always move me. You may recall the words: “For truly He taught us to love one another; His law is love and His gospel is peace.”
So go forth and love one another, here and in the world at large. And as you live by that law of love, may your gospel always be peace. Thank you, congratulations, and God Bless.
