Nick Jimenez

Sunday, May 28, 2000

Behind every graduate is a hidden story

High school and college commencement speakers are supposed to send the graduates out into the new world sufficiently uplifted by inspiring words to face the challenges of the coming years.
   Or at least with words that will be remembered at least up to, if perhaps not through, the first graduation blowout.
   To tell the truth, I can honestly say that I remember virtually nothing of any commencement speech I've ever heard.
   I've often thought that the best thing any graduation ceremony could do would be to ditch the commencement speaker and use the time to say a few words about each graduate while projecting their smiling and triumphant faces on a large screen.
   Every graduate is a short story of toil, sacrifice and commitment. In the volume of graduates, only each graduate's contingent in the audience knows what path has led to that golden moment.
   Imagine, if you will, that as each graduate stepped forward to get the coveted diploma, a vignette for each would be read.
   "Javier Gonzalez. In the third grade, his teachers didn't think he'd be promoted to the fourth, but his mother kept working with him on his multiplication tables and now he's on his way to being an engineer.
   "Steve Smith. His father died when he entered high school and he had to take on the responsibility of being the man of the house and the mentor for his four brothers and sisters, but that didn't keep him from being among the top students in his class throughout school.
   "Mary Ramirez. Has had a job all the way through school not because she wanted to but because family finances meant she had to. But working late hours didn't keep her from being the best musician in the band or from a promising future as a commercial artist.
   "Ben Jones. Neither his father nor his mother graduated, but they vowed when he was born that they would do everything possible to have him stand on this stage here today. They attended hours of PTA meetings, spent the equivalent of days talking and meeting with his teachers through the years and spoke volumes of words of encouragement, and they, and he, succeeded.
   "Jesus Hernandez. A science experiment in the eighth grade under the guidance of an inspirational teacher turned on his interest in school as nothing ever had before, and from then on, his curiosity and his drive to learn have been unquenched.
   "Nick Thomas. It took a long talk from his coach to keep him in school at one point, but he stayed because football meant a lot, and then slowly he began to learn that school meant a lot, too. He still loves football, but he loves learning just as much."
   Am I making all these stories up? The names are fiction, but the stories are real. They are the stories replete at any graduation ceremony. The kid who overcame devastating illness to stay the course, the student who plowed on despite enormous family difficulties, the scholar whose inner will in the pursuit of excellence was the highest and toughest standard faced - these are the stories that walk across the stage.
   The only indications of the emotion that attends each story are the whoops of joy from the audience. Somewhere, perhaps somewhere up there near the highest rafters, are two parents clutching themselves in happiness. One more though the gate.
   And even those short words may not tell all the tale.
   "Omar Jimenez. He made his parents feel young even as the years said they were not; they had a boy until one day a young man came into the room, a young man who dreams dreams they once dreamed and holds talents they could only dream of."
   Am I making these stories up? All except the last.
  
  

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