First and most important of all, I’m proud of you and I’m thrilled to be given time to talk with you and share a few nuggets of wisdom and advice as you contemplate your journey forward, diploma in hand…
Secondly, because I have the microphone and because I like to give people advice whether they want it or not, and because you’re a captive audience (my favorite kind), I’d like to tell you a story about the past; my grandparents’ past. It’s about adversity, creativity, and tenacity in the face of big challenges.
Dave and Marciel Barber (my mothers’ parents) were born in 1919 and 1922, respectively. They spent their entire lives in and around the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, in places like Morse, Texas, Dalhart, Texas, and Beaver, Oklahoma.
They told incredible stories about their lives - heavy with adversity, scarcity, the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. They wanted us to learn from their lives and their experience, especially that we shouldn’t take things for granted; that we should be grateful for opportunities that come our way. Life can be hard, it’s not a joke when it is, and it’s what we do for others each day that creates value in the world. They believed strongly that selfishness and greed should be overpowered by the importance of community, helping our fellows and striving to make the world better despite our immediate circumstances.
During the dust bowl, in the 1930s, thick dust piled high on the side of the houses there in Dalhart, Tx. Cabinets, floors, beds, plates and cups were coated with permanent dirt and was constantly in the air they breathed and in the food they ate. Their cattle died of ‘dust pneumonia’. Many of their friends and families lived through unbearable loss, fear and uncertainty. Some, like their family, stayed put and worked to make it through the worst of it, and some, like Tom Joad in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, decided to move West in hopes of a better life. Those were my ancestors; those were my grandparents.
I know the history of the 30’s fairly well, and if you’ve read Grapes of Wrath, you know that there were plenty of good reasons Okies packed up their stuff and headed out here to find work and a life for their families. Having journeyed here from Oklahoma myself some 80 years after the dust bowl, I believe that I’ve finally fulfilled my ancestral destiny and found my very own piece of Shangri-la on Van Nuys Boulevard. But, even though none of my ancestors had the good sense to leave, they did have certain qualities of character that helped them live through the worst of what the world could throw at them.
So, as they explained, and as I understand it now, dust particles that circulated during the big storms created a tremendous amount of friction and also a powerful static charge. This electrical charge made touching metal objects a hazard - so much so that people used to drag chains behind their cars to ground them to avoid being shocked.
One day, a particularly awful dust storm rolled into their farm. My great grandfather, Arthur Womble, who was out at his barn at the time, was blinded by the storm as he tried to find his way back to the safety of his house - it was only a few hundred yards away, but he couldn’t see a thing in front of his face.
He was disoriented, frightened, unable to see a clear path in front of him. But, suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a sparkling blue line. The barbed wire fence that connected where he was to where he needed to be had picked up a strong electrical charge to the point of becoming a literal guideline and beacon for him to follow. Just imagine that image for a moment: a blue sparkling line of barbed wire leading that man to safety and back home.
I hold onto this memory of theirs because it allows me to ‘see’ what they saw, to strengthen my connection to them, and, hopefully, to benefit from their experience. I share it with you today because I hope it’s an helpful example about how opportunities are embedded in challenging circumstances and that there’s hope to be found in the most unlikely places.
Arthur Womble took time to put up fences and to establish boundaries and foundations to build a life for his family. He never intended that barbed wire to be an illuminated guideline, nor could he have ever imagined that, but without that foundation, there may not have been a way back home to security and family, and the results for him and those he loved would have been disastrous.
The foundations we’ve tried to provide for you are designed to help you become the finest and most inspiring and ethical people you can become as you strive to change your world for the better in good times and in times of struggle. The knowledge and skills we’ve worked to develop within you are the tools that you’ll use to build the lives you deserve. Over the past four years, you’ve made thousands upon thousands of choices. When you’ve made good ones, we’ve celebrated you, and when you’ve veered from the path, we’ve reminded you where the lines are and why it’s important to stay within them.
Like my great grandfather, there will be times when the best approach will be to look at the world out of the corner of your eye. Answers are often found in the most unexpected places. If you trust in the process of living consciously and in all that you’ve built for yourselves here at CHAMPS, you’ll not only survive a 200 yard walk through a dust storm, you’ll do incredible things in your lives and for others.
We’ve striven to help you create a way of living that will prepare you for a world that we can’t begin to imagine today. You’ve risen to the challenge and you’re on the precipice looking out. You look at the world differently than your peers. Your every day life is imbued with a creative and accepting and beautiful spirit. You have a responsibility to seek out and build a life filled with hope, love, and a never-ending struggle to make a difference.
We think you’re ready for the challenge…
Congratulations and well done!
