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IVY DAY SPEECH
“Strong and Hearty Roots”
By Andrew Miner
Honored guest, members of the East Greenwich High School
community, family, and friends.
I stand before you today to deliver a message on behalf of
the class of 2014. But first let me say a few words about my classmates seated
behind me.
They are incredibly talented, fiercely loyal, tenacious, authentic,
passionate, purposeful, funny, and completely crazy, and I mean that in the
best possible sense of the word. They are simply the best, and the class of
2014 is the future. America and the world have nothing to worry about!
I say to the members of this class, thank you for the
distinct honor of being your president. It has meant more to me than you know.
Thank you to our class advisors, Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Healy.
They believed in us, never gave up on us despite our best efforts, and are
ushering us into our to our greatest hour as Avengers. We hope you are proud of
us today. We were proud to have you as our class advisors. Thank you for getting
us here!
We, the class of 2014, approach our graduation with gratitude
to our families, the administrators of our school, and our teachers for their
service to our lives. We have learned that through hard work and committed
effort many great things can be achieved, but often the most valuable things in
life come our way by grace-- a loving family, a committed teacher, a caring
coach--unearned gifts bestowed on us that can truly change one’s life. And
today seemed like the perfect day for us to recognize those gifts.
Ours is a generation that has known violence, terror, and
war. Together those gathered here have made sure that we have known beauty,
love, and joy as well.
You have armed us with the courage to rise when we fall and
given us a belief in ourselves and the goodness of others. You have taught us
to approach our fellow man with an open hand and not a closed fist, but to be
ever ready to fight when necessary for what is right and just. You have shown
us how to be understanding in the face of human mistakes and that our strength
lies in our diversity.
Soon you all will send us on our way with your lessons in
our hearts and on our minds. We will
never forget what you have done for us.
To our families, though we have not often shown it, we have
seen how you have risen with the early morning sun, gathered with the autumn
leaves, put your back into shoveling the heavy winter snow, and planted with
hope each springtime. You have done the extraordinary work of building a home
and raising a family under the cloak of the commonplace and the ordinary
routine. You have carried us. And when
we have had to walk alone, you have been a lamp to our feet. You have taught us
how to ride a bike, drive a car, mow the grass, butter that perfect ear of
summer sweetcorn, and how to recover from a broken heart. You have searched for
lost puppy dogs, put together superhero costumes at 11 o’clock at night, dusted
off your high school Spanish, and thrown thousands of pitches to us in the
backyard. You have attended concerts, ball games, tennis matches, and Science Olympiads.
You have hot glued dioramas, nursed us through the first week of braces, and the
extraction of our wisdom teeth. You have been present when we needed you most,
and content to watch from afar as we grew independent. We have seen your
sacrifice, trust me we have, and one day, in your image, we will do the same,
if the fates allow. For you have shown us there is no greater title than
parent. We love you deeply. We know we are here today because of you
To Mr. Prodraza, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Cobain, you were the
final frontier for this class. We all
knew where the buck stopped, some of us more personally than other. Thank you
for assuming that responsibility and for discharging it with fairness and
compassion, for supporting our teachers, and creating a culture of caring and
excellence in our school.
To Mr. Podraza and Mr. Chace, thank you for teaching us that
we matter and that it is still possible for those who are passionately
committed to a noble cause to change the world. To Mr. Cobain, because of you,
Avengers never have to concede anything when we step onto an athletic field or
any court or arena of competition, no matter who our competitors are. Thank you
for your service to our lives. It will be long remembered.
To our teachers, you have made certain that the lessons
gained in these halls have been filled with knowledge and healthy debate. You
have preached and practiced respect, acceptance, and peace, showing us what the
world can look like, indeed what it should look like. You have made our cares
your concerns and our education your calling. What a fine, fine education it is
you gave to us. From a young Holden Caulfield to the Old Man in the Sea, you
have encouraged us to Go Tell on the Mountain, from x equals four to graphing
the secant squared of 3pi over 2x minus one fourth pi to the negative one half,
from the American Revolution to the French Revolution to the cultural
revolution to electoral recounts to the election of America’s first African
American president, from hola and merci and latin conjugations to Spanish
poetry to French literature, from the structure of DNA to disulfide bonds to
Einstein’s theories, from handball to dodgeball to glazing pottery to playing Thad
Jones’ Big Dipper. You have encouraged us half a league, half a league, half a
league onward, coaching us to joyous victories and nursing us through painful
defeats in all aspects of high school life. You have charmed, cajoled,
demanded, and insisted on the best we had to offer, and then you asked for just
a little bit more, urging us to know our minds and our hearts better. You never
faltered, grew weary, lost hope, or abandoned your purpose because this task,
yes this task, was too important to you. And we, well, we didn’t make it easy.
Today we move on but you, our teachers, in a few short
months, you return to do this all over again for another group of students and
another graduating class. While this may seem like a monotonous exercise in
futility, it is a testament to your enduring faith in the future and your
willingness to put yourself on the line to preserve and influence that future.
Our superheroes do not wear caps or masks, although they have been known to
wear eye patches and ugly Christmas sweaters. Our heroes are our teachers.
Thank you. We know we are here today because of you.
Thank you as well to those who keep our school safe and
clean, who cook the food, staff the office, the guidance department, and the
nurse’s office. Those who have contributed so much to our time here and who
have been content to have their hard work stay in the shadows. Today, there are
no shadows. Thank you for what you have done for us.
Now, we, the class of 2014, pledge to you that we will be a
branch of this vine that will bear much good fruit. With your guidance we go
forth from this place seeking not the depreciating fortune of the good life but
seeking instead the unwavering value of a human life dedicated to hard work,
love, gratitude, and service to one another.
For the tasks ahead, you are our faithful and fixed example. You are our
hearty and strong roots. For these gifts,
we will always be grateful.
From the bottom of our very full hearts, from the class of
2014, thank you.
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Salutatorian
Speech
“Dare to Love”
By: Andrew Miner
Honored guest,
members of the East Greenwich High School community, family, and friends.
By now some of
you may have seen the viral sensation, the Norwegian video entitled “Hva Gjor
du om du ser et barn som fryser?”
While I’m sure
we have plenty of native Norwegian speakers with us today, one doesn’t even
need to know Norwegian to understand this video.
It is a mere 2 minutes
long.
It starts with a
young boy without a coat, hat, scarf or gloves waiting at a bus stop on a snowy
cold Norwegian winter day. The young boy has steam coming out of nostrils,
mouth, and off the top of his head, as he shivers and rub his bare hands over
his arms covered only in a long sleeve t-shirt.
His ears are
red, his lips are blue, his nose is running, and he’s shivering!
Slowly others
come to wait for the bus and they are shocked that the boy has no coat, no
protection against the elements. At first they seem to hesitate to interfere
but the boy is absolutely frozen. Gathered at the bus stop are a grandmother, a
young Norwegian woman, an older man and his wife, a skier in a slouchy hat, a
teenager, people from all walks of life.
First, we see the
grandma take off her scarf which she turn into a shawl and places around the
boys shoulders. The skier gives the boy his gloves, another person gives a hat,
coats pile on, and in the end a young man sits next to the boy talking and
laughing, himself in short sleeves as his warm winter parka lays wrapped around
the once shivering boy’s shoulders.
One commenter
said it best when he said, “Life is short. Never miss an opportunity to perfect
your own humanity. Love is simple. In fact it is that we truly have. It binds
us. It makes us who we are.”
That commentator
goes on to surmise that it is not the coat that keeps us warm, it is the love
that keeps us warm.
His clarion call
is simple but deeply profound.
“Be more human.”
As sophomores in
this high school we study Humanities. We ask big questions about the essence of
the human existence. We try to give meaning to our experiences and to learn
from the experiences of past generations and civilization. We find clues to our
humanness in history, literature, art, culture, styles of government, and all
aspects of discourse, but do we practice what we’ve learned? To attempt to
learn what it means to be human and improve on that skill every day?
We know that human
beings have a great capacity to love, but does that look like?
Well, if you
think the ability to love as no teeth, that it doesn’t split the atom or build
skyscrapers. You are wrong.
It is the
language of romance, flowers, and of Valentine’s Day. It deals in hopes and
dreams, and, yes, it believes in a kinder, gentler, more just world, but it is
not all peace signs and hearts. It is not passive. Love is an active verb.
It fights
apartheid and fascism. It founds Specials Olympics. In February of 2014, it won
Olympic Gold in a country that still attempts to deny its very existence. It
binds families and communities together through illness and the death of loved
ones. It helps neighbors tape up windows as protection against impending
hurricanes, and it creates a system of microfinance that gives credit to women entrepreneurs
in less developed countries that lifts entire families out of poverty. It
carries a person on through cancer so he comes out the other end an even more
relentless physical playmaker on the Avenger baseball field and still the best
friend a person could even want. And it keeps a coatless, hatless, gloveless
boy and those who come to his rescue warm in the frigid Norwegian winter. In
fact, it is the only thing can be endlessly divided and still not diminished.
Jackie, love is
how you finally get over losing AirBand when you should have won. No, wait,
only psychotherapy can achieve that. It is what makes B, our a 1,000 point
basketball star, help bring our unified volleyball team to a state and national
championship. It is responsible every time one of us helps out a sick or
injured classmate, the way Kim and CC brought me my homework for 3 straight
weeks while I was bedridden from a tough break. It’s what motivated Paul to
leave Mrs. Dulac’s period 6 math class and wheel me down to World Civ before
the bell every day. It’s either love or the fact that Paul hadn’t done his
homework. However, it’s not love that filled Rachel’s heart when she said “yes”
to a singing clown who asked her to senior prom. That’s what is known as pity,
and it’s not what is responsible for our star tennis player, Shiv’s success on
the court. That’s called a killer backhand. It is what fills Jaime’s and
Maddie’s hearts as they search for my runaway dogs, Linus and Lucy, and returns
them to my house nearly every week since the summer of 5th grade.
Love is what
warmed Big Hoss’ heart and led him to lift the ban on dancing in the city
limits of Beaumont. Love is what inspires Topaz to share her incredible
outlines and study guides so knuckleheads like Brett and yours truly me can
pass AP Bio. It is what Chris and Heather use to make unbelievable music from
black notes on a page. It’s what makes Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Healy stick by us
and believe in us when all rational signs point them in the other direction. I
mean all rational signs!
It fights
hatred, fear, prejudice, war, and intolerance in all its forms and conquers its
biggest adversary, apathy, on a daily basis. Not pride or vanity or greed or
power will get you there. Only love.
Yet, at times it
has the constancy of cotton candy and fragility of dandelion spores and
sometimes, when you least expect it, it makes you feel like you’ve swallowed a
jar of butterflies. That’s the paradox and the power of love.
It has been
steeped into our education at home and at school. Truly, it
has been the
cornerstone of our education, no matter the discipline.
Because of this
we know,
“There is no abiding
knowledge without character
No continuing commerce
without morality
No sustainable wealth
without work
There can be no lasting
politics without principle
And no true
pleasure without conscience.”
In short there
can be no REAL life without love. No matter how high we reach or what we can
achieve, how great the amount of money we can make, or how much power we can weld.
There is no REAL life without LOVE.
To my incredible
fellow graduates, the world is before us. Everything we dream of is achievable,
and we have big dreams. If our study of Humanities and our own personal
experiences has taught us anything, it is that love is the bridge between us and all of those dreams.
The great author
Bertrand Russell is quoted as having said, “Three passions governed my life,
the search for knowledge, pity for the suffering of mankind, and love. It is
the love of knowledge that has urged me to question such things as why the
stars shine. It is the love of mankind that has brought pity to my heart when loneliness,
poverty, and pain made a mockery of what human life should be. In the end, I
suppose it is just love. Love is my passion, love has guided my life and that
has made my life worthy.
But there will
be moments in life when we feel isolated, alone, hopeless, and far from love.
How do we find our way back?
In moments like
these, we needn’t stand on a desk or elevate ourselves in any way to see things
more clearly and find our way again. The great American writer and philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emerson would turn his world upside down by looking through your
legs, by stooping down to see what he had missed right under his nose. Often
the place to find the things that will give our life meaning and bring love to
hearts is close by and underfoot if we’d only look. And Emerson teaches us that
love is never about elevating ourselves. It is about bringing ourselves back to
the present place and location and finding our common ground.
These are things
I wish for each of us as we leave here today and for all the days that follow
this one. To have those same passions as Mr. Russell: a love of knowledge, a
love of mankind, and to be surrounded by and a part of the physical, mental,
and spiritual love that gives life its full meaning. Most importantly, to have
the ability to find it over and over again by a slight altercation in
perspective, just like Mr. Emerson, whenever we lose sight of it.
Some one exquisitely
brilliant once said life is either a daring adventure in love or nothing! It
has been said, on numerous occasions, that the class of 2014 is a bunch of
daredevils, so go ahead I dare you. Dare to love.
It has been an
honor to share today with you, a greater honor still to have shared the past
four years with you. I wish for each of us everything our hearts desire as we
part ways today having graduated from East Greenwich High School, but mostly I wish
for each of us to live a life filled with love.
Thank you.