Uncle Henry speaks from the heart on the YBR. A 2022 commencement address.

“Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked very hard from early morning till late night and did not know what joy was. He was gray too, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.”
―The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

While it’s traditional to begin a commencement address with a joke or a humorous anecdote, I will not break character. Although it is hard to believe, I never laughed. I was stern and silent. I was gray in a gray world. Rather than regale you with bromides and empty promises, I want to talk to you from the heart in an intelligent way with the courage of my convictions.

I shed a bucketful of tears the other day when I learned of the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. That such a tragic event should cast a dark cloud over your special day is powerfully sad. However, sadness is like a cancer that spreads like wildfire.

As sad as the most recent mass shooting in a school is, what is sadder is if we forget before we do something about it.

You might be asking yourself what you possibly do about it. You have enough on your plate: college loans, Covid, inflation, and supply chain issues to name just a few of the potholes on your yellow brick road.

Did college prepare you for the “real world?” Are you ready to take your place as an active participant in the life that awaits you? I am here to tell you that if you spent the last four years of your life only focused on getting an entry-level job at the expense of becoming the person you could be, then you wasted four years of your life.

As a young child you learned how to read. But unless you read to learn, you have many miles to go because learning is the carrot on the end of the stick. Learning is the spur that urges us on. Learning did not only happen in your classes. In fact, I believe that not much real learning goes on in the classroom. Learning was hiding all over the campus. Learning masqueraded as an opportunity. And as an old man, I can tell you that opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

That’s the message I want to give you today. Be aware of the opportunities that tap you on the shoulder and then choose wisely because you have a lot to consider when an opportunity comes your way.

If you did learn anything in college, I hope you learned how to think….critically; how to love…unconditionally; and how to have the courage to stand up to the forces of evil that will come your way.

Don’t allow yourself to become gray. Don’t believe there is nothing you can do, because every act of kindness you do will make a difference in the world. Don’t wait for tomorrow to live. Live now. Open yourself to new and meaningful friendships. Open your mind to new ideas. Have fun doing whatever you do. Find something to be enthusiastic about and find something to be indignant about. Then do something about both.

And lastly, appreciate the gift of life because it is a precious gift, a gift that was denied to the precious children and teachers at Robb Elementary. Since their names will never be called at a college commencement, I would like to end my talk to you today by calling out the names of those innocent children and the two wonderful teachers whose lives were cut short:

• Makenna Lee Elrod
• Layla Salazar
• Maranda Mathis
• Nevaeh Bravo
• Jose Manuel Flores Jr.
• Xavier Lopez
• Tess Marie Mata
• Rojelio Torres
• Eliahna “Ellie” Amyah Garcia
• Eliahna A. Torres
• Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez
• Jackie Cazares
• Uziyah Garcia
• Jayce Carmelo Luevanos
• Maite Yuleana Rodriguez
• Jailah Nicole Silguero
• Amerie Jo Garza
• Alexandria “Lexi” Aniyah Rubio
• Alithia Ramirez
• Eva Mireles (teacher)
• Irma Garcia (teacher)
  
  

Go forth today believing that you are a unique crayon whose job it is to add your color to the world. And don’t forget to color outside the lines!

Don’t go gray!

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The hijacking of innocence on the YBR.

“Between May 1961 and the end of 1972, there were 159 hijackings in American airspace. The majority of those were between ’68 and ’72, a five-year stretch, and sometimes they happened at the rate of one per week. You could have multiple hijackings in the same day — it was not an infrequent occurrence.”

I am a member of that shrinking community that remembers hijackings. In the spring of ’69 I flew home on El Al after spending a year studying abroad. Two soldiers holding machine guns were sitting in the rear of the plane. El Al was a likely candidate for being hijacked. Was I scared? Not really, and not because I felt invincible. I just didn’t want to be paralyzed by fear.

Today airline passengers rarely, if ever, worry about being hijacked. Measures are in place to minimize the risk. Today, though, we have new and more pernicious fears. The fear that fills us today was activated by yesterday’s elementary school shooting in Texas where 19 “innocent” children and two “innocent” educators were killed.

This tragedy overshadows any other fear we can think of because it is universal. Rare is the person who doesn’t have an emotional connection with a child. Rare is the person who has not been moved to tears by the tragic loss of life…again, in a school where innocence should reign supreme.

The airwaves and every form of social media will be flooded with outrage. Gun-talk will dominate many conversations. And the opinions will be divided. Stronger measures to make our schools a safe place will be bandied about. Some will argue that short of making our schools more “prison-like,” our schools are too vulnerable. They are literally sitting targets.

Teachers, who are on the front line, are totally distraught today, and rightfully so. They feel so helpless. They can’t help but think that such a tragedy could happen at their school. They are at risk of being paralyzed by fear. And it doesn’t help to tell a teacher that the “odds” of a school shooting happening at their school are a million to one. What happened at Robb Elementary (Texas) yesterday…what happened at Stoneman Douglas High School (Florida) in 2018…what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary (Connecticut) in 2012…and what happened at Columbine High School (Colorado) in 1999, happened in EVERY school in America because there isn’t a teacher who doesn’t believe or wonder that it could happen “here.”

Short of gun laws and extreme protection methods what can a teacher do? The fear of not being able to do anything will result in emotional paralysis…and that would be terrible for their students. As tragic as last week’s shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo was, people will continue to shop. The reason behind the Tops grocery store shooting can be identified and isolated. It can be rightfully called an extreme racist act, and as such the matter can be discussed. But, a school shooting? Such an act defies reason, and that’s why it leaves us heartbroken and helpless.

Does that mean we can’t do anything? I think there is something we can all do, and it needs to go way beyond talking about mental illness, even though mental illness has been a common factor among all the shooters.

Here’s something to consider, or should I say, ponder, and I suggest this at the risk of being called a sexist. The shooters were all males—-teens or young men. That’s not to say that a teen girl or young woman could not have been a shooter.

I have no answer, but I do think it is a question to consider.

And while we’re considering that, here’s something else to think about. Regardless of the age of the shooter, once-upon-a-time he was an innocent young boy. He was a pre-schooler, a kindergartener, a first-grader….He was in “your” class.

With anywhere from 20 to 30 students in a class, it is a gargantuan task for a teacher to connect with each and every one of their students. When a teacher greets their students on the first day of a new school year, they have no idea who those students (really) are. Since in my experience teachers are generally kind and loving people, they only see the goodness and innocence of their students. But, not all students are alike. As much as we don’t want to admit it, not all children come from loving homes. And where there is no love being shown at home, it is a challenge for a child to believe they are capable of being loved, and as a result they often don’t know how to love.

Unfortunately, many of those children fall through the cracks, especially if they are quiet loners. And then there are the “troublemakers,” the student who is the bane of existence for even the strongest teacher.

The expression that the “child is father to the man,” is so true. Without the ability to deal with the pain of not being loved or fitting in, or being the butt of “mean” kids, many children sail the seas of childhood without a rudder.

Teachers, since many of them are also parents, know how difficult it is to parent a child. If a parent is not really equipped to be a parent, there is a risk that the parent might overlook the tell-tale signs of a troubled child. Or in some cases, the parent is dealing with emotional or mental issues that have a long-lasting impact on their child.

Love is never part of a school curriculum, but loving always has a place in every class across America. Just imagine that if even only one or two teachers along the way provide that love and care a student needs, what a difference there could be. And if a teacher’s gut tells them there is something amiss with a child, how great it would be if just one or two teachers might be the “force” for change in a child’s life.

Love and kindness. Openness and inclusion. Cheer and goodwill. All are, in my opinion, in a teacher’s “wheelhouse.”

The “Prayer of St. Francis” comes to mind

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

That’s a big order for a teacher, but I believe if a teacher believes they are a force for good, they can do something to change the horrid landscape of school shootings. Instead of going to the head of the class with fear in their hearts, they need to shower their students with the goodness that comes from being a teacher.

Of course a teacher still needs to be cautious and prepared for the unexpected, but the fear of what could happen should not overshadow all the good that will happen.

Needless to say, we are living through extraordinary times. Anger and hatred have divided us in ways that none of us ever expected. The chasm that divided us has caused a terrible vacuum…and the little I know about the subject, nature abhors a vacuum. As a result, our children are being sucked into the black hole of despair. Our children are suffocating.

There should be an app to take care of this heinous vacuum. The funny thing is, there is an app. It’s the app of care and kindness. It’s an app that is powered by the love we have stored in our hearts.

While there is no way to say for certain that school shootings will go the way of air hijacking, I believe that our teachers, with the help of sane legislation, will make a big difference for our children.

Dedicated to the innocent victims at Uvalade.
In memory of all our children lost to the madness of school shootings.
In honor of my daughter Jennifer Begley Devine; my daughters-in-law, Sarah Miressi Begley and Courtney Muller Begley; my sister-in-law, Annette Luzon Harstein; and my niece, Jenna Hartstein – wonderful teachers all who teach our children to reach for the stars.

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