February 1996…

When it was announced Charlie Daniels would be the commencement speaker at UNC-Wilmington…, some students opposed it, questioning the selection of a speaker who didn’t graduate from college. He wrote this 4 months before graduation:

I would like to clear up a few points about my addressing your class at commencement exercises, points which I feel have been distorted by a few overzealous, uninformed, pseudo-journalists.

My professional life is a matter of documented public record and easily obtainable. No need to discuss that.

Having been born in Wilmington, I consider it an honor to be asked to speak to you on one of the biggest days of your lives, and I accepted the honor with gratitude and humility. I cannot speak to you of lofty academic ideals nor scholarly pursuits because I have neither entree nor credential for that world.

The truth is I come to you from the street, from reality, the very same place you’re all headed if you plan to make a living in this ever-changing, difficult, show-me world, and when your college days are just a memory and your diploma hangs beneath dusty glass or some office wall, you will still have to deal with that world on its own terms every working day of your lives.

Let me tell you why I thought I was invited to speak to your graduating class. My career spans almost 40 years and you don’t go through 40 years of hard work and unrelenting competition without learning a few things.

My qualifications are humble but extensive and diverse. I’ve stood at the 38th Parallel and looked across into the hostile eyes of the North Korean border guards. I’ve been catapulted from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Adriatic Sea and ridden across the frozen wastes of Greenland on an Eskimo dog sled. I’ve taken a hammer and chisel to the Berlin Wall and performed with symphony orchestras. I’ve had conversations with Presidents and walked the halls of Congress lobbying for legislation in which I believe. I’ve flown on the Concorde and acted in motion pictures.

I’ve seen the royal palaces of Europe and the hovels of Hong Kong.

I’ve seen the Mona Lisa and stared in awe at the timeless works of Vincent Van Gogh.

I’ve gathered cattle in the Big Bend country of Texas and met some of the wisest people I know at campfires in the middle of nowhere. I was privileged to have conversations with Alex Hailey and Louis L’Amour. I’ve appeared with The Rolling Stones, worked in the recording studio with Bob Dylan and two of the Beatles. I’ve been married to the same woman for over thirty years and raised a son who did, by the way, go to college. I’ve kept 20 people gainfully and steadily employed for over 20 years.

I am not a man of letters, I readily admit to that. But is being a man of letters the only thing which qualifies one to speak to a group of men and women who are about to enter the real world? My world.

My address will not be delivered in the beautiful strains of poetry of a Maya Angelou or with the technical expertise of a Tom Clancy, but I can tell you where some of the land mines are hidden, the shortest path to the top of the mountain and the quickest way down. Been there, done that.

          Charlie Daniels

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.