Commencement Address, May 12, 2001
Given by Roger H. Mudd, host of The History channel and editor of "Great Minds of History." Formerly a co-anchor of the NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, 1986, and American Almanac, Mudd was an essayist and correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour and worked for CBS as congressional correspondent and national affairs correspondent. Mudd received an Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Shenandoah University, May 12, 2001.

President Davis, members of the Board of Trustees, fellow honorees, distinguished faculty, graduating seniors, their proud parents and friends, and students.

Before I start these remarks, I have several announcements:

First, any graduating senior who has not yet cleared with the academic office, the business office, the financial aid office, the registrar's office and the library office, you've got about 30 minutes to guarantee that your diploma will actualy be in your cardboard tube.

Second, Coach Walter Barr just told me that he guarantees that the Hornets' football record for the coming season will be at least 8 and 2.

And third, the Shenandoah Telephone Company, which says it's delighted with the name 'Shentel Stadium,' with its signs at every entrance, on every program cover and all over I-81, now wants the defensive front four known officially as the "Shentel Shockers."

When your president asked me to give this speech, I asked him if he thought I needed to work up anything special about your university, become acquainted with its particular problems, take care to become informed about any campus issues.

But President Davis said, bless his heart, "No, Roger, just be yourself. You don't have to be informed about anything."

I had one other request of your president -- that he arrange to send me your college newspaper so that I might flavor the life here; and so one of the pleasures of putting this talk together was getting to read the Shenandoah Sun -- "published every Wednesday during the academic year, except holidays."

What comes through is a surprising awareness of what's important, a very slight anti-establishment tone and a heavy financial dependency on the ads from Anthony's Pizza, the Wilkins Shoe Store and Spanky's.

But The SUN has covered it all -- from the great return of intercollegiate football; to the Hornets' crushing defeat of Gallaudet, George Mason, Averitt and Principia for the nation's best record for a start-up team; the naming of Ron Merriwether to the Dixie Conference's All-Tournament Basketball team and Megan Tupper to the All Dixie Womens' lacrosse team; to the weekly column and invitation to lunch from President Davis (I studied his photograph in The SUN very carefully each week. Funny how his picture looks a good ten years younger than what I remember); to the reports of domitory vandalism, with Maintenance Manager Hans Nydam charging that "someone put chewing gum in the keyless re-entry slot; the $4.3 million dollar purchase of the old Baymont Inn with its crummy plumbing; and the installation of the 16 new security cameras and the complaint of senior Tony Canterna who told The SUN that he "lives in fear because he can't go outside with an open container. I'm 21," he said, "I should be able to do whatever I want because that's my right."

Hey, Tony, if you're out there, get a lid for your container. Twenty-one is not all it's cracked up to be.

It's always a pleasure to come to the Valley , but, I warn you, this is the first commencement speech I've given in the Valley and we will all know within a few minutes whether it will be my last.

I am also honored to be here but slightly apprehensive that I have not been able to put together words appropriate for the occasion.

It was Conrad Hilton, the hotel millionaire, who was asked toward the end of his long and successful career for some of the lessons he had learned, something that might be a guide to the young and after a long pause he said, he thought one really good idea was to keep the shower curtain inside the tub.

So, men and women of Shenandoah, I am happy to be a part of your graduation -- if only from half an hour or so -- and your passage into the bright sunlight of a new world.

Because this is one of your last gatherings as a class with your teachers and the Shenandoah community, it is not really a time for a heavy message freighted with global significance.

It is, rather, a time for family joy and pride, some pieces of sweet and bitter nostalgia, and perhaps a light dusting of advice. But mostly, this day is for celebration.

But I would not want these moments to pass without making some judgement about why you have been here for these past few years and what you have done.

Why have you? Why have you subjected yourself to a higher standard than need be?'

Why have you studied longer, thought more, written harder, aimed higher? The answer is, I think, because you really wouldn't have wanted it any other wayl.

And now that's it's over, you really could not have lived with yourself knowing that you had not fully engaged your mind and challenged yourself.

What you have done -- by coming to this school and succeeding here -- what you have done by seeking out the challenge and stimulation of college -- is to accept the realities of life.

Your coming here was inevitable because education is inevitable; it is in the nature of man.

Man is educable; and therefore it is mandatory that he become educated.

We unfold our minds because they are there, waiting to be unfolded.

It is inconceivable that we pass them by.

A person is not a person at all if his mind does not function, if he bumps along on instinct and appetite, declining to make use of everything God has given us.

Francis Bacon, almost 400 years ago, told us: "reading makes a full man; conversation makes a ready man and writing makes an exact man."

Years ago, before most of us were born, a wise Frenchman said: If youth knew; if age could."

We all know what he meant: that when we are young, we have the power to do anything but we're not quite sure what to do.

Then, when we have got old, and experience and observation have taught us some of the answers, we are tired and perhaps frightened; we no longer have the capacity or the will to challenge or change.

But you men and women on this gorgeous morning and in this beautiful spot -- and on thousands of other campuses and churches and field houses -- you do have the power to change the world.

Archimedes, the Greek mathematician, with all his levers and screws and pulleys, said he "could move the earth if only he had a place to stand."

Well, each one of you now has a place to stand and each of you can move the earth.

I know this moment is a precious one for each of you and your families because all across the country in field houses and auditoriums, thousands of Americans are commencing a new life, moving into a different and tougher world.

May I tell you how unique each one of you is?

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios the same, it would be about like this:

There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from North and South America, 8 Africans.

52 would be female; 48 would be male; 60 would be non-white and 30 white; 60 would be non-Christian and 30 Christian.

Six would own 59% of the world's wealth and all six would be Americans.

Seventy would be unable to read; only one would own a computer and only one -- that's you -- only one would have a college education.

That's exactly how unique each one of you is.

At a recent commencement address, the writer Anna Quindlen told the graduates: "You will walk off this campus with only one thing that no one else has...You will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life...People don't talk about the soul much anymore," she said. "But realize that life is the best thing ever and that you have no business taking it for granted."

And if Shenandoah and your professors and your parents hope you learned one thing in your time here, it would be a respect for rationality, respect for the open mind, respect for the lessons of history and tradition, respect for the values of a civilized life.

Looking back now, I think I can date the start of my love affair with books and history to 1936 and the day I got my first library card. I was eight years old. It was at the Chevy Chase Branch of the D.C. Public Library in Washington, D.C.

My father, wearing his Palm Beach suit and his Panama hat and those perforated summer shoes, took me.

The card was of heavy manilla stock with rounded corners. My name and address were typed in and it was signed in ink by the Librarian. And as she and my father watched, I signed in ink.

It was the first time my cummunity, my society , my government had recognized me as a semi-rational, semi-literate person, as an individual who could be trusted to care for something, to return it on time and in good condition and to be respectful of its rules and regulations.

At age eight I had been pronounced capable of behaving myself but more importantly, I had become on that day 65 years ago a novitiate in the great human adventure of acquiring some wisdom, some intellect, imagination, and sensibility and some preparation for what the Greeks have called the good life.

A great majority of those who are graduating from college today will have degrees in economics, business, space medicine, nuclear physics and communications, which means that most will probably be heading for what Doris Grumbach once called the "Brave New World of the Floppy Disc."

But let us hope that they, too, will discover before it is too late the joys of a life bound to and inspired by the humanitities.

It is, indeed, a life worth living.

I will not wish you good luck because I think you are all too talented to need luck.

But I will offer my congratulations for finishing and finishing well what you set out to do.

This commencement address was given by Roger H. Mudd, May 12, 2001, to the graduating class of 2001.