I want to begin by saying welcome to Dr. Nigliazzo,
distinguished board members, platform guests, my collegues,
family, friends, but most of all, the ones of you sitting out there
in blue. This night is for you. Everything about tonights
celebration is because of you. As I look around this auditorium
at the hundreds, Thousands, MILLIONS of people, they didn’t
come here to see me. They didn’t come to hear what I had to
say. In fact some of them are probably saying, “I wish she
would hush and sit down so we could see our loved one walk
across stage”. Either that or they are saying, “That is the most
unintelligent, hick sounding woman I’ve ever heard in my life”.
I want you to know, it’s a family thing. All the women in my
family sound like this. I don’t know why my Dad doesn’t , but
my Mom and two sisters sound like this. There’s only one group
of people here because of me, and they are sitting over there is a
section together. But I have to be honest with you, I had to bribe
a couple of the smaller ones and one uncle with ice cream
afterwards to get them to agree to come. These people are here
tonight because you have done something great. In a few
minutes, you are going to walk across this stage and have placed
in your hands something that the majority of the people in the
world would give their eye-teeth to have, but for one reason or
another, they will never get. Maybe they feel they don’t have
the resources, or the gumption, or just the plain ole guts to do
what you have done. You have taken the first steps in a journey
that will carry you through the rest of your life. Whether it’s
your first time in college or your 10th time back. And I hope that
if you don’t already realize and appreciate, you will come to
appreciate the fact that you took those first steps at Temple
College. We’re not Harvard or Yale, but then again, we’re not
suppose to be. We are a small community college and our
mission, our goal is totally different than a Harvard or Yale. Or
mission is to serve our community, and , I don’t know, maybe
I’m partial, but I think we are doing a pretty good job. I took my
first steps at Temple Junior College many years ago. There is no
way that I can relate to you what this community college has
meant to me without telling you a story. It’s the story of the
Tom Haile family, consisting of a dad, a mom, and three little
girls who moved to Temple in 1965. We moved here from
Gustine which is a small town about 90 miles west of here.
Gustine seemed to me to be the type of town that would roll its
streets up at 6 o-clock at night and roll them back our at dawn
the next morning. It was the type of town where the retired men
of the community would gather at the corner store, that had long
since stopped being a store, and sit on wooden crates or broken
down, rickety old chairs to play checkers or dominoes, and I’m
proud to say, my grandfather was one of those men. We had a
school, the first 6 grades were housed in 4 rooms. The 2nd and
3rd grades were together, and the 4th and 5th grades were together.
In fact, my3rd grade teacher, who was also my sisters 2nd grade
teacher, had also taught my mother and grandfather when they
were in high school. When we moved to Temple and my parents
found out there was a college in the city limits of that town, you
would have thought they had hit the jackpot. They didn’t say
anything for several years, I guess they were waiting until they
were sure we were old enough to understand what we were
being told. One day, they called us together and sat us down and
our dad said, “Now girls, we have a college practically in our
own back yard, and I’m telling you this now so you can prepare
for it, but, you no longer have just 12 years of school, you have
14. After that, what you do, is up to you. If you never step foot
in another college, it’s totally up to you, but you will go to
Temple Junior College and you will get a 2 year Associates
Degree. Being the good little, obedient daughters we are, we
just looked at each other and said, “OK”. We all did attend and
graduate from Temple Junior College. I graduated in 1976, I
went on to get my Bachelor’s , my Master’s and this past
December, I graduated from Baylor University with my
Doctorate in Educational Administration. I have been a member
of the Temple College faculty for the past 23 years. My middle
sister, Janet Hoelscher, graduated from TJC in 1977. She went
on to Mary-Hardin Baylor and got her Bachelors and her
teaching certificate and has been a member of the Academy
Independent School District faculty for the past 19 years. My
little sister, Suzanne Prcin, graduated from TJC in 1980, and is
now the office manager of the Temple College Uptown Center.
My parents have 6 grandchildren, all of whom will eventually
attend Temple College. The impact that this one little
community college has had on the Haile, Botts, Hoelscher, Prcin
families is immeasurable.
You know, every time I decided to go back to school, I knew,
beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my family would be behind
me. They would do what ever it took to help me be successful,
whether it was picking my boys up from school or keeping them
when I had to be gone. But over the years, talking with some of
you, I’ve discovered that that is not always the case. In fact,
sometime the people you are closest to are the ones trying their
hardest to hold you back, trying to keep you from reaching for
that goal or fulfilling that dream. When I was 13 years old, I
was as wide as I was tall, and I wore glasses. Not just any
glasses, they were what I called “cat eye” glasses. They came to
a point on either side of your head to make your eyes look
somewhat catlike. I know that I was probably instrumental in
picking out these glasses, I probably thought they looked cool,
until I wore them to school. When I did, the kids laughed at me,
made fun of me and called me names. It got to the point that I
hated those glasses. I would leave the house with them on in the
morning, take them off before I went into school, and not put
them on again until it was time for my mother to pick me up that
afternoon. I finally ask my dad if I could get new glasses. Not
because I couldn’t see, they were brand new, but because of
what people were saying, thinking and doing to me at school.
And do you know what he said? “It doesn’t matter what anyone
else thinks, or what anyone else says, or what anyone else does.”
Well, at 13, that wasn’t even close to being what I wanted to
hear. Now that I am a year or 33 older than 13, he was exactly
right., it doesn’t matter. Everyone of you have within yourself
everything you need to reach that goal or fulfill that dream. So it
doesn’t matter what mother or dad, sister or brother, husband or
wife, children, or anyone else for that matter. What matters is
what is going on between your ears, what’s going on in your
heart.
When my boys were little, they are 16 and 20 now, but when
they were little, I bought some Walt Disney videos. I’m not
talking movie videos, but Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofey,
Pluto cartoons, the good stuff. We watched those videos over
and over and over. We watched them so many times that my
oldest son could leave the room to get something to drink and
recite every line of every skit on every video. Each of those
videos began with the same song, and it was a song that I had
heard all my life. My sisters and I grew up with the Wonderful
World of Disney on Sunday nights, and each of those episodes
began with this same song, but I had never paid any attention to
the words to the song until I was grown and watching those
cartoons with my boys. The words were so powerful that I
would catch myself singing it around the house or humming the
tune at the grocery store, and I would like to share it with you.
You don’t have to worry, boys, I’m not going to sing to them,
I’ll just tell you. It went something like this. “When you wish
upon a star, it makes no difference who you are, if your heart is
in your dreams, the dreams that you wish will come true” Now,
it’s probably obvious to everyone by now that I don’t teach
English, but lets take a look at that last statement. It didn’t say
that your dreams could come true, it didn’t say that they might
come true, it said they will come true.
There was a movie, sounds like all I do is watch tv, it’s not, but
these two things just stuck with me all these years. The movie
was called Spencer’s Mountain, and had Maurien O’Hara and
Henry Fonda, they were the parents, and they had a bunch of
kids. I mean a truck load of kids, they made the Waltons look
like they had been to planned parenthood. The parents had
maybe a 6th grade education, and their dream was that their
oldest son, Clay Boy go to college so that he could pave the way
for his younger brothers and sisters to follow in his footsteps.
The movie revolved around what this family had to do, had to
give up and sacrifice, in order to get Clay Boy to college. Clay
Boy worked hard too, he worked around the homestead and also
worked hard at school and ended up at the top of his graduating
class there on Spencer’s Mountain. One of his teachers took an
interest in him and wanted to encourage him to go to college, so
on graduation day, she presented him with a plaque with a
saying carved in it. I have used that saying so many times over
the past 15 or 20 years since I first heard it. This is what it said.
“The world steps aside to let any man pass, if he knows where
he is going”. Let me repeat that, “The world steps aside to let
any woman pass, if she knows where she is going.” Folks, all
you have to do, is let us know where it is that you are going, and
we will all gladly step aside and let you soar. Thank you.