OUR YOUNG PEOPLE
'Tis the season for older people to speak to younger people about the blessings of Graduation Day from all levels of formal school training. It is important that young - and all of us - be reminded of how important that Great Day is in our lives.
Blue Ridge Community College, located at Weyers Cave, Virginia made a wise choice again this year in having Belle S. Wheelan as their commencement day speaker. She, with no attempt to be outstandingly different, chose the theme which kept telling graduating students :”Don't stop now! Learning is a lifelong process!”
Rachel Campise, a BBRC student speaker, who plans to continue her education at Virginia Commonwealth University, did what I like to call a commendable “warm up” just ahead of the words of the keynote speaker and she held the attention of the crowd of about eight hundred or so listeners reminding them of bike champion Lance Armstrong's motto: “Turn every negative into a positive!” Campise said she saw evidence of that sort of tenacity among fellow student at BBRC - “ Looking, seeking, searching always for something better - be ready to take that next step!”
When Belle S. Wheelan then stood before the same crowd more than few of us must have realized that she represented so well another type of the very same sort of personal dedication in order the get where she stands today. Belle S. Wheelan is Virginia's first black Secretary of Education.When tells young people today: “Don't stop now! Learning is lifelong process”. Her word rings with a sincerity which plainly states her own, individual gratitude for those elements of community involvement which have brought it into being for her and for all of us.
Secretary Wheelan has a sharp sense of humor, too.Older friends and family at the gathering, at moments shower swept and umbrella covered, heard her caution older people and, at the same time, alert some young ones, by saying: “Our children are our future!” There, she paused for a fraction of a second and her eyes twinkled brightly as she quipped: “They're going to pick our nursing homes.”
A.L.M. May 16, 2003 [c599wds]
