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 Class Speaker Matt Russ of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, called his college years "a
rich source of stories," noting that the people he met each had "an intriguing
past and a promising future." He learned about these people, he said, by
listening to their stories.
"Upon graduating, and for the rest of our lives, we are going to meet more and
more people who are different from ourselves," Russ said. "It will be up to us,
wherever we are and whatever we do, to find a means of coexisting. Call it
peace. Call it love. Call it tolerance. Call it whatever you like. I will call
it sharing stories. I will think of my Colby diploma as a bookmark of sorts,
marking a chapter of stories that opened my mind to the exciting minds of
others." A few minutes after concluding his speech, Russ returned to the podium
to accept the 1996 Condon Medal, an honor voted by the class and confirmed by
the faculty.
Charles Osgood, proud (and occasionally choked up) father of Kathleen Wood '96
and, incidentally, anchor of CBS News Sunday Morning and CBS Radio's
The Osgood File, was on hand to deliver the commencement address despite
the obvious conflict. ("I told my mother that Charles Osgood would be here,"
Bill Cotter said at a reception for the honorary degree recipients the evening
before Commencement. "She said, `Well, where will he be Sunday morning?' We're
basking, but millions of people are hating us," Cotter said.)
Indeed, Osgood gave the assembled seniors, their parents and the rest of the
crowd plenty of warmth in which to bask.
"A commencement speech is supposed to contain words of wisdom for the
graduates," he said, "but as a broadcaster I have discovered that there is
neither a great supply of wisdom nor a great demand for it. My own personal
supply of wisdom is such as to guarantee that this will be a short speech."
Osgood then offered "a commencement speech within a commencement speech" and
recited a 14-line poem read by Dr. Suess when he addressed graduates at a
different college several years ago. The poem, "My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art
of Eating Popovers," encouraged students to "Do a lot of spitting out of
air . . . and be careful what you swallow!'"
"Your feelings are mixed now, I am sure," Osgood said. "Joy--that you have
achieved what you set out to. Sadness--that this chapter in your lives is over.
You realize now that some of the finest people you will ever know have been
here in your years at Colby. From them, the dedicated men and women of Colby,
you have learned a lot, not only about the subjects of your studies, but you
have learned a respect for wisdom. And you've learned something about
dedication yourself, and the fact that the greatest satisfactions in life are
those things we do for others.
"Without the expressed permission of every mother and father here, but secure
in the feeling that I'm right about this, I can tell you that we parents are
experiencing a mixture of strong emotions about this day of yours, too. Love
and pride and happiness for you, along with a flood of memories and a
breathtaking, almost dizzying sense of `Where have all those years gone?' We
look at you sitting there in your caps and gowns, all grown up, and other
pictures flash through our minds of you when you were little. I mean really
little, when you were a baby; yes, even when you were first born. You being
tucked in and kissed goodnight; you going off to school for the first time; you
in a school play; you laughing and playing and singing. You growing up.
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