<< Back

At Bryn Athyn College's 2008 graduation ceremony, which took place on May 23rd, the heartfelt commencement address was given by Anders Gyllenhaal, executive editor of the Miami Herald.

Prior to joining the Herald as executive editor, Gyllenhaal was editor and senior vice president of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, executive editor of the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, editor, investigative reporter and local reporter at the Miami Herald from 1980 to 1991, and held several positions at newspapers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia over the past 25 years. He serves on the boards of the Pulitzer Prize, the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the American Committee of the International Press Institute. He is a long-time advocate for press freedom and access and has served as chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Gyllenhaal was raised in Bryn Athyn. He and his wife, Beverly, a syndicated columnist and author, live in Coral Gables, Florida with their two teenage children, Sam and Grey.

Mr. Gyllenhaal's address to the graduates was genuine and unique. Rather than delivering the address from the podium, he stood right in front of the graduating class and spoke directly to them with sincerity, humor, and good advice.

His remarks are provided just below.

---

Bishop Kline, President Carswell, Dean Lindsay, Dean Dibb, members of the faculty, parents, students and, of course most of all, our graduating class: It's such a privilege to be here on this most meaningful day in the life of the college. Thank you for the welcome and the past days of conversation and festivities that show off what a remarkable place this is—and one that some of you are getting ready to leave behind.

Our job today is a simple and delightful one: to celebrate this rare moment in both your lives and the life of the college. When you think about it, those of you graduating, and heading off into the world, share something with the college itself, which is embarking on a version of the same thing: In effect, taking on the world with the plans to expand and reach out with some of the most ambitious goals imaginable. So I think it's safe to say we're all doubly proud of reaching this day. For those of you graduating, I know it's taken a huge amount of work and some sleepless nights to get here. As a parent of a son in college and a daughter approaching it, I can tell you that aren't the only ones who've had trouble sleeping at times. There's a unique feeling among the parents on this day and a kind of similar feeling among your teachers—that deserves a huge round of applause.

Turning to our graduates, I'd like to add just one small point that I hope you'll take with you.

And if your parents and friends and teachers don't mind, I thought it might be best if we left off with the lectern and speech and just sort of talked amongst ourselves for a few minutes.

The point I'd like to make to you has to do with the enormous power of what one person can accomplish—what one a single, dedicated individual can do in this world. When you think about it, you've been of a group—a class, a team, a study group, a school—for much of the past what, 15 or 20 years, and now you'll be on your own.

If you're like I was at this stage, you would be part exhilarated, part petrified, unsure what exactly you can do. You're entering this new global society, where it's easy to feel powerless against the pace and push of world events. Do not doubt this: You can have an impact beyond anything you imagine.

Maybe the best way of talking about this is through a story from the field of journalism that goes back to about 15 years ago. A young, slight reporter for Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, was sent off to Eastern Europe to cover the war in Bosnia, when that region was coming apart in an unprecedented state of ethnic cleansing.

The reporter, Roy Gutman, was part of the usual herd of reporters, camermen and photographers from the biggest outfits from around the world, including the networks, CNN, BBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, all writing about the question of what should happen in reaction to the steadily climbing death toll that some observers thought was a kind of civil war, while others believed as genocide. Nobody could figure out what was going on. The U.S., NATO, allies were all paralyzed.

That's where Roy stepped forward. A single person, no crew, no staff, just a dedicated reporter, tracing down the facts, built a steady case that what was happening in concentration camps every bit as horrific as World War II. Even though this was a regional paper, his stories began to circulate to Washington, to the world capitols, and eventually helped prompt the allied effort that stepped forward and brought an end to the worst of that conflict.

I just love that story for what it has to say to the rest of us. Every paper I've worked at over the years has stories like this one. In Raleigh, N.C., at The News & Observer, two relentless reporters were able to uncover a secret plan to pull the wool over the eyes of state government and expand the hog industry across Eastern North Carolina in stories so persuasive the state had to step in with a moratorium that ended up lasting for years—and changed the course of events. In Miami last year, a single reporter began following tips about a group ofunprincipled developers misusing public money for low-income housing. The story she uncovered led to a string of arrests and the first among them went to jail last week.

I can't help pulling these examples from newspapers because it's what I know best. But if you watch for this, you'll notice that in every walk of life, it's often that one dedicated person—often a quiet, humble, relentless person behind the scene—is the one that is really responsible for shaping what happens. They range from coaches and counselors, to mothers and fathers, to portraits in history:

- The young man struck by polio, forced to spend years just regaining his health, turned out to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our longest running president.

- A simple electrician from a family of peasants in the Polish town of Gdansk turned out to be Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity Movement that helped overthrow communism.

- A waif of a nun from Albania, so small and thin she was often mistaken for a girl, grew up to be Mother Teresa.

I'm not suggesting that you set off to overthrow communism or shoot for sainthood. What their stories do show is what you can accomplish—and the same thing is happening unnoticed, away from historic events, in every day life.

What do you suppose these people have that set them apart? Terrific intelligence we don't all share? Wealth or power that we can't all start out with? Actually, those things tend to be more obstacles in launching a life that takes on something profound. The most important ingredients of all are available to everyone in equal parts, and that's hard work and focus.

What you cannot do without is a strong foundation, which is really part of the definition of what Bryn Athyn is about. That and the conviction there's something bigger and more important than you, which again is what this community stands for.

Some of the best illustrations can be found in the classrooms where you've just come from, the ministry, in counseling, coaching, in the person willing to step into another lives at the right moment. I will forever remember when my class reached eighth grade—when you finally become a true student, right? We've all known those classes the teachers just love to see reach their grades, full of bright students, thirsty for knowledge, showing signs of leadership in secondary school. We were the ones in between two classes like that, the group that made the teachers thankful for what came before and after us.

But in eighth grade, our class ran into the wall that was Yoravar Synnestvedt, quiet, gentle, sometimes unpredictable—he was known for taking messy desks of students who ignored his entries for cleanliness—and turning them completely upside down, leaving books, papers, pencils spread out on the floor. That left an impression.

And so did his teaching. By the time we left his classroom, he had managed to turn on a new light on the writings of Rudyard Kipling, Williams Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger that I didn't even know at the time as a seismic change in my own direction.

I'll tell you one other story, if you promise not to let anyone else know. I had one teacher at college here—I won't tell you who because he's in this room—who once finished reading one of my papers. He looked at me with this quizzical look on his face and asked me if English was my native language. Nothing wrong with the question, except that I had already set my sites on some kind of life of writing and was mostly getting by on a mixture of hustle and bluster up to that point. When I told him, that yes, we mostly spoke English at home, he nodded and frowned and then began marking up my papers so much there was more red ink than typewriting. Slowly, painfully, I learned the grammar and punctuation that never came easily and would have kept me from one of the most fulfilling careers I could imagine.

I know without a doubt that there were half a dozen teachers in Bryn Athyn schools—several of them in this room—who changed the course of my life, and they probably aren't even aware of it. Then they moved on to the next class, some of them to you. Think of the accumulative changes in lives when you add that up.

Let me give on final thought: You are reaching the end of a singular chapter in your lives. It's easy to lose track of how remarkable and unique this experience is while you're in the middle of it. But to make this point, let me ask. What percentage of the world's population do you think end up with a degree like the one you've just earned? If all of us in this room represented the entire world, what would the number be of those who reach this moment, particularly from a private, religious school like Bryn Athyn? The answer is one person.

That is why much is expected—and why you will discover you can give back so much. It's a gift you will appreciate more each year—and one that can change the course of events in many ways. We wish you the very best.