It was a warm morning here on the Island, but thankfully, the ceremonies were on the short side. It was well planned, the speeches and awards were short in duration, and the surroundings outside were almost ideal (almost--we sat in the sunshine and it became a tad bit hot).
The commencement speaker was the retiring president of our local college. In the course of her talk, she made the remark that, regardless of what she say, her words would not be remember for over 24 hours, if that long. Her remark got me to thinking of all the graduations we had attended over the past 60 years or so, beginning with our own in 1954 from high school and continuing through those of our kids, and now going on with our grand kids, and also including friends and family of friends. No telling how many graduation addresses we have heard, but as Mayre and I agreed on the way home, there was but one talk that we both remembered.
I believe it was when Doug received his degree from Georgia Tech, or it might have been Dwayne as both did get advanced degrees from that august institution, and the commencement speaker was a professor from the Engineering Department. His speech was memorable because of its length, less than 10 minutes as I recall, and also as it related to its subject. He talked about engineering and the use of duct tape.
As this professor reached the end of his presentation, he said something like "If you don't remember anything that I said this morning, at least remember one thing, Duct Tape". Then he sat down to some giggles but also to warm applause.
Profound, maybe, but memorable, definitely.
No comments:
Post a Comment