STARKVILLE — Going back to one’s alma mater to deliver a commencement address is a rather surreal experience, but one that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
After delivering the 2010 fall commencement address at Mississippi State University last Friday night, I had the rare opportunity to get a firsthand look at the graduates as they walked across the stage to shake hands with MSU President Mark Keenum, Provost Jerry Gilbert and the appropriate academic dean in their chosen field of study and receive their degrees.
The thing that caught my attention as the graduates made those proud walks across the stage were their smiles and their shoes. But I think I paid an inordinate amount of attention to their shoes.
There were shoes of every possible description. Many of the women wore impossibly high heels — which are apparently in fashion these days. Many of the men wore work shoes or boots.
Some of the shoes I saw were just-out-of-the-box new. Others were worn and dull and well-utilized.
One student had only one shoe — for she had only one leg. No single student was more determined or self-assured in making the walk across the stage than was that young woman on crutches.
Several students limped across the stage in spite of their disabilities.
On the whole, the shoes worn by the Class of 2010 reflected the extremes of poverty and wealth. Their shoes reflected myriad lifestyles and backgrounds.
I recognized several students, and I recognized even more Mississippi family names with connections to MSU. There were other names that were unfamiliar, the names of MSU students from foreign lands who found their way to Starkville to gain an education.
In watching all the different shoes walk across that stage in the Humphrey Coliseum, I could not help but think back to my late parents. Both of my parents were the first persons in their families to earn a college degree, and both of them earned that degree at MSU.
I thought of the bridge that a college education had been for them from poverty to dignity. I thought of the fires they both had inside them for teaching and the 79 combined years they spent educating other people’s children in Mississippi public schools.
More than anything, I thought of the number of times complete strangers had stopped me and told me what a difference my parents had made in their lives as teachers and mentors and surrogate parental figures.
Watching those seemingly endless pairs of shoes pass in front of me, I thought about how different my parents’ lives would have been without their educations — and how very different mine would have been as well.
It is hard to imagine where those shoes that passed in front of me — and the people in them — will go. But those engineers, farmers, foresters, teachers, biochemists, physicists, accountants, veterinarians, meteorologists and all the rest have so many paths open to them now.
Just before the commencement began, my old friend Bobby Tomlinson (now associate director of athletic game operations in the MSU Athletic Department) found me and offered his encouragement prior to the speech. Bobby laughed: “Well, I guess neither one of us ever thought you’d be giving the commencement speech all those years ago when we roomed together.”
Truer words were never spoken.
After the speech, I realized that my speech really didn’t matter. But the people wearing all those shoes and the paths they will eventually take in their lives — now they matter. Their life journeys are now under way. Who can stop them?
