What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder?
What makes the dawn come up like thunder?
What makes the Hottentot so hot?
What puts the Ape in Apricot?
What have they got that I ain’t got?
Courage!

Good evening 009.  It is hard for me to believe that twenty-four hours from now you will no longer be Muhlenberg College students, but Muhlenberg College alumni.  So here you are, four years after we first met at June Advising.  And once again, you are perched… on the high dive.

I wish I could say to you, as a commencement speaker said to my classmates many years ago: “My generation is leaving you a perfect world – don’t mess it up.”  Back then, in the midst of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and social strife, we knew he was joking. Now, as we send you off into the worst economic crisis of our lifetime, with our country engaged in two wars, I believe you would look at me and say – “that’s not funny, that’s sick!”

And so, since this is my last opportunity to talk to you as students, I thought I’d better tell you what you’re going to need to make it in the world beyond the Chew Street bubble.

First, you’re going to need brains – but I don’t need to lecture you about that.  You’re all smart, and you’re all well educated.  You have studied with the best liberal arts faculty in the world.  Most of you have mastered the habit of lifelong learning. You are intellectually as ready as we can make you.

Second, you’re going to need heart – but I don’t need to convince you of that either.  The overwhelming majority of you have volunteered your time in the Allentown community – at homeless shelters and hospices, child care centers and clinics, libraries and schools.  Whatever your neighbors have needed – from meals, to tutoring, to prom dresses, to income tax assistance – you have used your time and talents to help.

Those of you who can see where I’m going with this will know that there are only two other things you might need that I could be talking about this evening.  Let me eliminate one of them:  it’s not ruby slippers.  Greg Paradis already has his, and the rest of you don’t need them.  Besides, the last thing your parents want me telling you tonight is “there’s no place like home.”

So, let’s talk about courage.  Because you are going to need it in the days to come as you make your way in this new and difficult world.  You are going to need it when you look for a job, and when you lose a job.  You’re going to need it when you face the loss of a loved one or when you choose a spouse. You’re going to need it if you are going to achieve anything worth achieving in life.

Fortunately, you have excellent mentors from whom you can learn the essentials of courage.  I am not talking of Sully Sullenberger or Captain Richard Phillips, heroes though they are.  I’m sure they have much to teach you, but I really cannot imagine that many of you will need to crash land a plane on the Hudson, or fight off pirates.  Instead, I want to talk with you about heroes whose experiences are closer to your own.  Three of them have spent time among you.  Another, I will introduce to you tomorrow.  They exemplify the three essential elements of courage.

The first of these elements is attitude.  To be courageous does not mean to be without fear. Indeed, those incapable of fear do not need courage (brains, probably, but not courage).  Take your classmate, and my friend and Maine neighbor Justin LaPlante.  Justin has had perhaps the lousiest senior year you can imagine.  Diagnosed with colon cancer just before spring break, he had to cancel a cruise he’d booked with his friends so he could have surgery, followed by aggressive and debilitating chemo and radiation treatments.  Tough break?  You’d never know it from Justin’s e-mails: to hear him tell it, his treatment center in Boston is more luxurious than the Ritz Carlton.  And better still, he said, he’s now close enough to take in some early season Red Sox games at the Fenway!  And, he reported, how about this for a stroke of luck?  B.U. was hosting a concert by his favorite group, Flight of the Conchords, and he’d be right there to see it!  With all this going on, he almost forgot to mention that he was in the worst of chemo and radiation therapy, finishing up the coursework for his major from his hospital bed, and sleeping about 22 hours a day. And, here he sits among us tonight – a living example of positive courageous energy.

So, whatever challenges and setbacks you face in the next chapter of your life, think of Justin – find the positive, focus on it, and find the courage to smile.

Another key ingredient of courage is determination.  Nobody exemplifies this quality better than two members of the Class of 2008, Jacy Good and Steve Johnson.  Many of you know Jacy and Steve, but for those who don’t, here’s their story.  They met the first day of freshman year and were pretty much inseparable for the next four years.  On graduation day just a year ago, they parted just long enough to go to their respective homes, planning to meet again in New York where they both had jobs lined up.  Somewhere near Reading, a teenager on a cell phone ran a stoplight.  A truck swerved to miss him and collided head-on with Jacy and her parents, crushing their car, killing Jacy’s mom and dad, and leaving Jacy in a coma with numerous broken bones and massive brain trauma.  Chaplain Peter Bredlau and I visited her bedside at Reading Hospital the next day and Steve was already there.  Frankly, I didn’t believe Jacy would make it.  Her injuries were too numerous, too massive.  Steve was more determined.  He never left her side.  While Jacy lay hooked up to tubes and monitors, her head shaved and her limbs in casts, Steve stroked her cheek and talked to her.  If Steve had any doubts about her survival, he didn’t let them show.  A couple of months later, Patti Mittleman and I visited them at the Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation hospital.  Jacy was talking, she even cracked a joke.  Steve was still by her side. He had given up the job he’d had in New York to focus on Jacy, and that decision was paying off.  You know the rest of this story – at least to date.  Jacy is not only ambulatory, but back to her old activist ways, lobbying for a bill that would ban cell phone use by drivers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She is not 100%, but she is determined to get there.  And Steve is still by her side.  This, my friends, is courage.  It is not the future Jacy and Steve envisioned for themselves one year ago tonight –it is not a hand any of us would want to be dealt.  Yet they have played their cards with with grace, guts, and dignity.  We can all learn a lesson from them. Remember their determination as you face life’s sometimes cruel surprises.

Finally, remember that courage is rooted in convictions – the values that give meaning to your life.  And now let me tell you about my fifth hero, a man whom you will meet tomorrow.

Cassius Clay was born in my home town, Louisville, Kentucky.  When he was twelve he got a new bike for Christmas – a red & white Schwinn.  And when it was stolen shortly thereafter, he went to find a cop.  He told officer Joe Martin that he was going to find the thief and “give him a whuppin’.” As fate would have it, Joe Martin was not only a cop, but trained young men to box.  He told Cassius that if he was going to whup that thief, he’d better learn how to fight.  Six years later, Cassius Clay won Olympic Gold in Boxing in Rome, and returned to Louisville a hero.  There were parades and speeches, and the mayor told him his medal was his “golden key to the city.”  I’m sorry to say, however, that Cassius’ and my hometown was just as racist in those days as most of the United States.  Although Cassius had every right to believe that he had earned the respect of all his fellow citizens, he received a rude awakening when a local coffee shop refused to serve him. 

Years later Cassius Clay, now known as Muhammad Ali, wrote: “I had won the gold medal for America, but I still couldn’t eat in this restaurant in my hometown, the town where they all knew my name. . . .Later I realized that it was part of God’s plan…. Before I was kicked out of the restaurant, I was thinking what the medal could mean for me. The more I thought about it, the more I began to see that if the medal didn’t mean equality for all, it didn’t mean anything at all.”¹  After years of telling people that he had “lost” his treasured Olympic gold medal, Ali finally confessed the truth.  He had thrown it in the Ohio River.

Clay’s physical courage would be tested many times over the next four years as he fought his way to the world heavyweight championship.  He was just 22 – the same age that most of you are now – when he overcame long odds to knock out the formidable Sonny Liston and had fulfill his lifelong ambition. He had also reached a turning point in his spiritual journey, announcing his conversion from Christianity to Islam and taking the name by which he is now known the world over: Muhammad Ali.  This was a vastly unpopular decision at the time. The Black Muslim movement was considered subversive, if not revolutionary, by most white Americans. The outcry from the press and the public was immediate and brutal.  But worse was to come. In 1967, Ali was classified 1-A by his draft board, and called up for induction into the armed services.

It is hardly likely that he would have faced combat – he almost certainly would have been assigned to fight exhibition matches for the army. But Ali’s religious convictions and his opposition to the Vietnam War convinced him that military service was incompatible with his beliefs.  He realized that if he refused to serve, he could go to prison and lose everything he had worked so hard to attain, including his title.

On April 28th, 1967, Ali reported as ordered to the United States Armed Forces Examination and Entrance Station in Houston, Texas.  Reflecting on this moment years later, Ali wrote:

“A curious thing happened as I waited for my name to be called. I looked at the young man who would call my name, and I saw that he was more nervous than I was…I realized that he was just doing what he had been ordered to do, and that everyone in the room was just doing what he had been ordered to do, whether he believed it was the right thing or not. And suddenly I felt very calm and at peace with what I was about to do.  I knew it was the right thing to do, and I knew it was the right thing for me to do. It gave me an overwhelming sense of freedom and certainty. I refused to step forward….If I had to go to prison, I would do it, because if I didn’t follow my true beliefs, I would never be free again.”²

Forty years later, the Vietnam War remains an open wound on the psyche of our nation.  Just a week ago, a Vietnam veteran wrote the local paper condemning Muhammad Ali for his decision to be a conscientious objector and condemning Muhlenberg for honoring him.  You may disagree with his decision as well.  But what cannot be denied is that the decision required moral courage.  Ali was willing to pay the price for his beliefs – and he did pay a very steep price indeed.  Stripped of his title, banned from the ring, Ali was an outcast from his vocation during what should have been the prime years of his career.  He was convicted of draft evasion, lost on appeal, and – were it not for a successful final appeal to the United States Supreme Court – he would indeed have gone to prison.
Ali would return to the ring in 1974, regaining his title at the age of 32 from the formidable George Foreman in the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire, and four years later, at the advanced age (for a professional boxer) of 36, he won the title back again from Leon Spinks, becoming the first fighter in history to win the World Heavyweight Championship three times. 

But this wouldn’t be the end of Ali’s battles. The man you will meet tomorrow has been fighting Parkinson’s disease for over thirty years.  Ironically, the disease has deprived him of his physical agility and his eloquence.  But it has not compromised his spiritual growth.  He has achieved distinction as a humanitarian and a philanthropist.  He has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush, and been named a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

I do not expect any of you to win the world heavyweight championship.  But I do know that many if not most of you will face unexpected and unwelcome challenges to your plans, to your health, and to your beliefs. You will need the courage of a Justin LaPlante, a Jacy Good, a Steve Johnson, and a Muhammad Ali.  I know that each of you has this courage within you.  Look for it when you need it, and it will be there. I look forward to following your adventures with interest, whether through Facebook, Twitter, the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, or the class notes in Muhlenberg Magazine.  Be strong, be brave, and be happy.  Keep the faith.  And God bless you.