¾¨Ó㴫ý

By Walter E. Scheid, Ph.D., Professor of Speech Emeritus

¾¨Ó㴫ý Opening Convocation 8/24/01

Thank you Dean Deegan. President Williamson, ¾¨Ó㴫ý representatives and colleagues, friends, family members, and ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2005. It is to you that I principally speak.

This is the fourth time I have had the honor to address an opening convocation and the first since my "retirement." I am grateful for the opportunity.

For you incoming students, today marks a new beginning in your life. You may not fully recognize this, but I'm sure your parents do. Allow me to illustrate. A priest, a minister and a rabbi were sitting around one day discussing the question, "When does life
begin?" The priest spoke up to say, "Well, I believe that life begins at the moment of creation, the instant the sperm and egg unite." The minister countered by saying, "I don't agree. I feel that life begins around the end of the first trimester when the fetus begins to take on some distinct human characteristics." The rabbi shakes his head and says, "You're both wrong. Life begins when the kids go off to college and the dog dies!"

As a seasoned public speaker, I am ever mindful of two pieces of advice that a professor in graduate school once gave me about speakers in these kinds of situations. First, he said to remember that everyone in the audience feels that if all the commencement or convocation speakers in the world were laid end to end. . . it would be a good idea! And second, he said to keep in mind that your role is like that of the corpse at an Irish wake. They can't have the event without you, but nobody expects you to say very much!

I don't have that much to say quantitatively. I'll let you be the judge of whether I have anything to say qualitatively.

* * * * * * *

In the month and year that I was born, May, 1937, a magnificent new bridge opened in California. It was the Golden Gate Bridge, which linked the city of San Francisco with Marin County to the north. The structure was built at enormous cost--in terms of human lives and money. But it was, and arguably still is, the greatest bridge in the world. And it provided boundless benefits to the people of that area.

I wish to speak today about the importance of building bridges, not in a literal sense, but rather in the sense of human relations, advantage, and opportunity. I have gained so much as a person from the bridges that others have built for me, sometimes at their personal sacrifice. And these bridges have made me better financially, socially, spiritually, and educationally.

I crossed many of these bridges in a time vastly different from the present. Let me retrace my steps for a moment.

I crossed in a time before radar, credit cards, laser beams and ballpoint pens; before pantyhose, dishwashers and electric blankets; before house-husbands, gay rights, computer dating, day-care centers, group therapy, FM radio, tape decks, artificial hearts, flavored yogurt, and men wearing earrings and women wearing tuxedos.

I crossed in a time when bunnies were small rabbits and rabbits were not Volkswagens; when designer jeans were scheming women, a meaningful relationship was getting along with your cousins, and fast food was something you ate during Lent.

I crossed in a time when chip meant a piece of wood, when gigabyte was something that happened on hot date, when hardware meant hardware and software wasn't even a word. At the time of my crossing, dimpled chad was the happy little kid
down the street, and nobody was prettier than my mother!

I would like to think that I have never burned my bridges behind me--but they are links I can cross again only in my memory. The bridges of my past and my youth have brought me to my present station in life, as the bridges you have crossed have led you to ¾¨Ó㴫ý and to the transition that awaits you.

The bridge to your college education here at ¾¨Ó㴫ý has many unique and interesting features that have been painstakingly structured to link various disciplines and levels of education, to unite theory and practice. Brevity forbids that I talk about all of them, but I want to focus on just one feature -- that of community service. It is something with which vast numbers of you have already been actively involved and something which is more than a curricular requirement -- it is a human necessity whether collectively or individually. I want to share a story with you, one of my personal favorites, which shows what helping others can mean.

The time was February 20, 1965 and the place was Los Angeles. And in Los Angeles, with its myriad interlacing super highways, there is a place where four different interstates conjoin. The entrance ramps to the four roads are built one atop the other, and local people have named the place "The Stack". I saw it in 1983 when visiting the city to attend a dinner honoring the late actor, Robert Mitchum. And there I heard of the incident that had happened there eighteen years earlier.

It seems that an ordinary man was driving home from work that February day through the usual hectic traffic jams. He got on The Stack entrance ramp that would take him to the main highway and his home. Once on the road, and just after crossing a short overpass bridge, he noticed a stopped car on the right side of the road with a distraught woman standing beside it. As he zoomed by, he glanced in his mirror and saw that the car appeared to have a flat tire and that no one was stopping to help. He thought to himself, "That poor lady looks like she's in trouble. I think I'll work my way back and see if I can lend a hand."

He got off at the first available exit and worked his way back. When he returned to the interstate, sure enough, there was the woman, and no one had stopped to help. After parking in front of the disabled car, he went to ask if there was anything he could do. The woman was visibly flustered and said, "Yes. I have a terrible personal emergency. I have to get somewhere quickly. I have a flat tire and no spare. Can you help me?"

As luck would have it, the motorist had the same make and model car as the woman in need, so he had a compatible spare tire. He jacked up her car with traffic roaring by just a few feet away, put on his old, beat-up spare, tightened the lug nuts, and had the woman ready to go.

She was profuse in her thanks, took his name, address, and phone number and vowed she would be in touch. But before he could find out who she was, the woman was in her car headed for her destination.

The man told his wife about the incident when he got home. Then about two weeks went by and he heard nothing from the woman. As he drove home one night, he thought, "There I went and did it again. I'll never see that woman or my tire for the rest of my life." As he entered his house, the first thing he saw in one corner of the living room was a new full-sized color TV -- which in 1965 was really something. The next thing that caught his eye was his wife on the sofa crying. Immediately he jumped to the conclusion that his wife had blown the savings account to buy an expensive television set and was now having pangs of conscience. He began to berate her saying, "Why did you do it? You know we can't afford something like this!"

As he was ranting away, he looked to another part of the room and saw a brand new tire against the wall, mounted on his rim. And his wife was so overcome by emotion that all she could do was hand him a letter that was delivered along with the television and the tire. The letter read:

"I can never possibly repay you for the kindness, courtesy, faith and trust that
you showed in me, a total stranger, in my hour of desperate personal need.
This television set and a new tire to replace the one you gave me are the least
I can do to reward the services of a modern-day Good Samaritan.

"I want you to know that your help enabled me to reach the hospital so that I
could be at the bedside of my husband during the last hour of his life."

The letter was signed, "Mrs. Nat 'King' Cole".

Nat 'King' Cole was one of the greatest popular singers of all time who died of lung cancer that day so many years ago. But his name lives on in the person of his daughter, Natalie, and this story stands like the word of one of his most famous songs, "Unforgettable."

I do not know the name of the man who aided Mrs. Cole. I do not know his race, his ethnic background, or his religion. I know that he never attended ¾¨Ó㴫ý, but I choose to think that he is the kind of person who would -- that is, a person who is kind. And I have seen thousands like this in my years of full-time teaching.

Community service, collective or individual, is not something you will be taught in a classroom but something you will surely learn in your college life. The people you help may never care what you know, but it is most important that they know that you care. As the Apostle Paul wrote nearly two thousand years ago, "be servants to one another in love". This is the greatest way to bridge the gap between people. And you never know whom you may be helping.

* * * * * * * *

There is a poem, written more than a hundred years ago by a man named Will Allen Dromgoole which summarizes my point today. It is called "The Bridge Builder", and it reads as follows:

An old man going a lone highway,
Came at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide;
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm deep and wide'
Why build you this bridge at evening tide?"
The builder lifted his old gray head--
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There follows after me today,
A youth whose feet must pass this way;
This chasm that has been nothing to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim--
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

I am 64 years old and statistically, I am living in the last one-third or the last one-fourth or the last one-fifth of my life. That fraction may be even smaller, only God knows the answer. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that my yesterdays vastly outnumber my tomorrows and that I am living somewhere in the twilight of my life. Still, while I may be retired, I have not quit; while I may be aging, I am not finished. I still have bridges to build, professional and personal, and I still have, in the words of Robert Frost, "miles to go before I sleep."

In this spirit I welcome you as you prepare for the first year in crossing the Golden Gate of opportunity that others have built for you, a year which will see ¾¨Ó㴫ý reach the sesquicentennial of her life. Crossing this bridge will take some effort on your part, but you will find the roadbed well maintained and free of pitfalls. And you will find our bridge firmly rooted in the bedrock of the liberal arts. As you cross, by all means enjoy the sights along the way -- that is an intergral part of college life. And when you have crossed, and probably well before, you will come to realize that the toll charges have been worth it!

But more than anything, I encourage you to build some bridges of your own so that others can have an easier crossing through life. Build them while you yourselves are crossing, build them after you have crossed, and please, don't wait until the twilight to do so.

May God guide you on your journey, and may God bless this great college which was, is, and always will be, so much a part of my life.

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