UAlbany Class of 2004 Undergraduate Main Commencement Ceremony
at the South Lawn, New Science Library
More than sixty years ago, they came to Albany for a better life. The band of brothers were sons of another land, and as they drove up the roads of upstate New York, they paused at each county to take a photo with the appropriate “welcome sign.” They were explorers—modern day Lewis and Clarks in their state-of-the-art Ford Model A. They were the children of repression, the children of discrimination. They came to Albany to work for the state, as clerks and bookkeepers— and they wrote home to the sweethearts they had met at holiday dances, whose hands they had held walking up the Coney Island Boardwalk.
This was America—and they no longer had to think of all that they had known, of pogroms and Cossacks, of czars and shtetls. They came from the squalor of Eastern Europe and worried about the war that raged near their homelands.
They knew not of television, terrorism- AIDS, or America Online. They knew not of Nixon, ‘Nam, or Nike— Seinfeld, Salk or Sally Ride. But they paused at the brick and ivy covered buildings of the Albany State Teachers College and snapped a photo.
I found that photo years after the death of one of those explorers—my grandfather.
I wondered what he thought of that earlier institution——the predecessor of the university that I graduate from today. I remember the awe that filled his aged eyes when he took me to Albany as a child. It was a place he had come in order to move ahead, and the little job he took had led to a long career.
The photo re-appears in my mind anytime I forget the privilege I have to attend this university. My classmates and I continue the journey of those men today. We come from places my Grandfather’s gang might have thought “exotic;” from Nigeria or Haiti, Ghana or Guatemala, Pakistan or the Philippines.
We are here to work towards a better life.
And there is no question that the tradition will live on—that Albany will continue to be a destination on that path. We do not know what people will say of us in sixty years or what will occur in our world and we face daunting challenges that they probably never imagined, but we march on. Soon we will board ships whose destinations are not entirely clear, but we go on with the education Albany has provided us as our shields, and the experiences we have attained as our swords.
And we will never forget what Albany has meant to us— the rainbow that stretches the fountain on a beautiful day—the shoulders we cried on when we couldn’t imagine a tomorrow— the speckled, rough ceilings of our dorm rooms that we starred at after night had fallen—the professors whose words changed our lives— the chaos and mayhem of Quail Street on a Saturday night.
We will remember Albany as we march on— and we will never shy from our duties to give back to a community that has given to us. And perhaps sixty years from now, someone will find a faded photo from our days in a dusty attic— and know full-well that the image is not just a piece of paper — but a piece of a great circle that will still be spinning—that we are proud to be part of— and that we shall never forget.
Thank you.
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