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Summer 2003

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Thank you very much Father President, members of the Board, distinguished faculty, parents, most importantly students. You survived! I’m sorry – I was not talking about four years at Villanova - I’m talking about the crawl.

I worked here at Channel 10 and had to cover the morning after. Oh how I remember walking up the Main Line with a camera crew finding beer cans, people. I’ll be brief as I know how the rain drops are beginning to nicely match our temperature of 36 degrees. All those of you graduates who thought you would wear flip-flops today as one last act of protest against your parents – your feet are cold now aren’t they. I am a parent – you will get no sympathy from me. And the reason you are wearing square hats is in the event of inclement weather – I may go for an hour.

I’m not often in front of a public address system this impressive and you will forgive me one self indulgence. There is something I wanted to hear many years ago and never did because of injury and incompetence so if you’ll just forgive me one moment - now starting at outside linebacker # 89 Brian Brian Williams Williams. Thank you very much. It was a tough game but we take them one game at a time and our backs were against the wall in the fourth quarter but we show what kind of character we had.

It is a thrill to be here. I was watching Christian speak and I was watching his grandmother in the front row – don’t cry - because some day he will come after me for the job as anchorman at NBC Nightly News. And to the best man in show business thank you for being here as well today.

There was a time when I did not know if I was going to be to able face you here today. We were on a mission in central Iraq just a few weeks ago when a rocket propelled grenade came out of no where and forced down the first in an armada of four helicopters we were traveling in; and with God as my witness, I was sitting there on the desert floor in Iraq for two nights and three days in what we later learned was a hostile territory, wondering when was that Villanova commencement?

What a strange time, what a strange background to gather today for such a wonderful event and you would think we would have better connections in the Catholic Church than to expect this kind of reception.

I want to deliver a very simple message and again it won’t take long at all. And that is as you look around you, you no doubt see the political debate raging right now. I want to tell you that if you like the way your country is right now great. Remember it, seal it up and lock it away. If you want change, if you don’t like things, remember too your time will come. If you don’t like your country remember to feel free to stand up and say so and say it loudly and say it clearly because it is your right.

You may be seeing some higher educated people who are old enough to know better these days making a mistake; they are mistaking questions about this nation’s policy for a lack of patriotism. You’ll forgive them; try not to be like them when you grow up. They just forgot. They forgot that those who came before them questioned the policies and the direction we were headed. There have been some honorable protesters in this nation’s history. You may some of their names from your studies – Adams, Madison, Jefferson –
I still wish I could change what happened to your nation while you were here at Villanova.

I long reconciled myself to the fact that the America that I grew up in is gone. And it breaks my heart to realize that the America even you grew up in is probably gone forever as well. And it breaks my heart as well to say to you today that you leave here with a burden. A good friend of mine and a co-worker already branded your grandparents generation the greatest generation and for awfully good reason. They saved the world. So the excuse, “I can’t do it, it won’t work,” that’s out. They won Anzio, they won Midway, then handed off to your parent’s generation who build you the most prosperous nation in world history. My generation will some day hand you the keys and say to you this is our nation. We love her very much. Take very good care of her. Love her as we have. We may ask you to die for her in fact.

I came home from the war still being fought overseas having seen the very best of your generation. They are today wearing uniforms and not caps and gowns and they are carrying M-16s and rocket propelled grenades and not diplomas. You would be so proud of the work they are doing overseas. Do me a favor, if you take just one thing away from this today make it a point to thank them all when they get back and they will get back.

I have a confession to make - that was a very generous introduction and mine has been a wonderful life especially for a kid from Jersey. But if you can all promise to keep a secret there is something missing, politely and carefully missing, from my introduction and the biography you have in your programs. You have something today that I never got. You didn’t have it yesterday, you have it today. It is a nice way of saying that I never graduated from college. You know that expression if I can do it you can. There are now no excuses for any of you in this age of precision guided munitions and smart bombs you are the most potent weapon on earth. You have an American college education.

There are members of your great generation who are as we speak dug in in the desert far from here where it is now Sunday afternoon. They are taking fire still, they are living in deplorable conditions still, the toughest conditions imaginable and I would like to think they are doing hardest work of your generation, but I fear there is going to be hard work to come. You are going to be called on. You for your special talents, your brains and you ability, the gift Villanova gives you today. The enemy is shooting at our guys, the enemy took down our buildings in New York, but there are more of us. Our belief exceeds their hatred. The strongest enemy when fueled only by hatred of an ideal will always be defeated in the end by the awesome power of belief in an ideal.

Those willing to fight for freedom vastly outnumber and vastly overpower those who want merely to take it down. For just the fifth time in a hundred years, think about it, passage into American adulthood that this ceremony represents today makes you defacto combatants in a war that was not of your own choosing. Your parent’s generation will protect you as your grandparents did. They will protect your world and your beloved nation until their time comes. This weight that you are feeling today is the sum total of four years crushing down upon you in one day. Realizing now what it means that your parents really did love you enough to send you to Villanova and sacrifice to make sure you were the best you could be. A round of applause again for them.

Please realize the keys you are about to be handed to this nation that we love are heavy and the responsibility is awesome. You are needed. It is a huge responsibility but your timing is good. Nobody told Villanova back in ’85 they couldn’t beat Georgetown. And nobody told Villanova in 2003 they couldn’t beat UConn. You are the Villanova Class of 2003. No one is going to tell you there is anything you can’t do. Go get ‘em! Thank you.