Lewis County Powerful Examples of Excellence Awards

May 12, 2004

I have been following the challenges and accomplishments of our youth for a long time. Aggressively since 1988 when I began researching information for a program I wanted to present to young people in schools about drugs. I was your age in the sixties when drug use went out of control creating serious problems for a lot of people. We are living with that unfortunate legacy today.

However, I must hasten to add that in the eighties we were able to cut drug use in half with the help of coordinated efforts from all facets of society including law enforcement, business, schools, the media and a lot of wonderful, concerned young people like you.

Continued, efforts by theses same groups of people have succeeded in keeping the use at about the same level, but the types of drugs and approaches to get people, particularly young people using still continues to change.

Dealing with challenges is something I would like to touch on a little tonight and emphasize why you are so important, why your accomplishments that have led you to this event tonight and the receipt of these high honors and recognition are so important. You have set your life in the direction to be what I call a lamplighter which is what I would like to touch on, this evening.

What do I mean by a lamplighter? I first heard of the old lamplighter in a song by that name when I was younger than you. I was just a kid in the fifties and loved music as much then as I do now so I used to listen to music on a radio that my Mom got us at the goodwill or Salvation Army. It didn’t even have a cover around it, so we made one from the wood of an old apple box.

The song was a simple beautiful ballad that went:

“He made the night a little brighter wherever he would go, the old lamplighter of long, long ago.”

It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I learned in actuality it came from a bit of history and literature that goes something like this:

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go: some stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts and we’re never the same. Sir Harry Lauder, the Scottish humorist and singer, loved to tell the story of the old lamplighter in the village where he lived as a boy: Each evening as dusk came, the old man would make his rounds with his ladder and his light. He would put the ladder against the light post, climb up and light the lamp, step back down, pick up the ladder, and proceed to the next lamp. After a while,’ said Sir Harry, ‘he would be down the street and out of sight. But I could always tell which way he had gone from the lamps he had lighted and the glow he left behind.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, life’s highest tribute would be to live in such a way as to deserve the words, “I could tell which way he went by the glow he left behind.”

After you leave here you are faced with the greatest adventure—life. How will you take what you have learned and apply it to make the world a better place—or will you? What shape will your life take? Who will you touch? Who will you impact and whom will you help along the way? What lamps will you light?

You can’t know the answers to these questions. But you must know that what you do in each moment is an opportunity to spread light and hope. Every time you help another you will bring hope to the world.

As you go forward from here, you will find so many chances to benefit your fellow men and women by taking what you have gained from your experiences and hard work as a student, and lighting flames wherever you pass by.

I encourage you to not hesitate to light a lantern because you think it will not make much difference. The mighty Columbia River begins with a drop of rain, a melting snow flake, and builds to this magnificent wonder that lights our cities and irrigates the fields that grows the crops that feed the world.

And even though you have accomplished a great deal by getting to this incredibly important point in your life, I urge you not to wait for opportunities to come your way, but go out and find them. Seek them out.

You may hear one person bemoaning as they sit waiting for that special opportunity to show up, “Man I never get a break. I am so unlucky.”

Then again, you can hear the opposite kind of person, if you can slow them down for a minute, saying, “Man, it seems like the harder I work the luckier I get!” You see—opportunities are not known to make house calls.

Then while you are setting the world on fire, remember the words of the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said,

“If you find your life is empty, try putting something into it…such as kindness. Kindness is the language the blind can see and the deaf can hear. You can never do a kindness too soon because you never know when it will be too late.”

Even though you are only just getting started in life you can begin with knowing that your contributions to the world will not be small if you give them that extra bit of care. Light a lamp wherever you go, and illuminate the places and people that you touch. No flame is too small, and every moment is an opportunity.

Down the road twenty, thirty or forty years from now it is impossible to know what our world will look like.

About forty years ago, John F. Kennedy said, “We will land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.” Around the country, people said, “You’ve got to be kidding. Land a man on the moon?” At that time to do so was something unbelievable—incredible. For many it was thought to be impossible.

I can imagine when Kennedy got back to his scientific advisors, that they collectively might have even paused and said, “Can we do this?” Knowing Kennedy, I believe his response would have been, “Of course we can, this is America and in America we can do anything!”

And we did. America put a man on the moon. Our goal to land a man on the moon included getting him back safely to earth, which at that time meant that only the space capsule could be recovered following a splash-down in the ocean.

We dreamed of and could only imagine returning a spacecraft to earth on a runway. And I can remember, and still feel the lump in my throat, as I watched the first space shuttle safely land back on earth. We dreamed it, imagined it, and the bright minds of America made it happen.

Then somebody said “let’s put a probe on Mars,” and we did. Not only landed one there, but actually fixed it from earth when it went haywire. These are things people my age just dreamed of, we just imagined. They were only found in movies, or like a scene from Flash Gordon or Star Trek. Most of you may not even know who Flash Gordon was—but back then all that was just too futuristic to us.

Things that you see every day like a door opening on its own when you walk up to it or transferring information from your palm pilot to a friend’s, or to a computer. That was something like a transponder from Star Trek—pretty cool, but to us not real. Not possible.

John F. Kennedy said, “We will land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.” And people thought it was impossible. But he dreamed it; we all imagined it, and America did it.

So, what’s next? You dream it and ask, “Can we do it?” Of course you can do it, you are incredible, and this is America! You are limited not by your ability, only by your imagination.

So what about the dream of a world without war—why not world peace? After September 11th and the awful carnage and cowardice of the terrorists in the middle east and around the world, with Korea and India and Pakistan playing with nuclear missiles ready to blow each other apart and maniacs in control of armies and arsenals, and Osama bin Laden still at large can we truly even have a world without war?

I believe that world peace is possible. That is my dream. And that dream is expressed well in this simple song, an old favorite of mine:

Last night I had the strangest dream I ever dreamed before I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war I dreamed there was a mighty room the room was filled with men And the papers they were signing said we never fight again And when the papers all were signed and a million copies made They all joined hands and bowed their heads and grateful prayers were prayed

And the people on the streets below were dancing round and round And guns and swords and uniforms were scattered on the ground Last night I had the strangest dream I ever dreamed before I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war

And what about a world without hunger? What about a clean, safe, good home and a good job for all people, including those who suffer in third world countries? Can we do it? Can you do it? I say, of course you can, because if you can dream it, you can do it. You must do it!

I am sharing this with you because I have been told what great, highly motivated young people that you are. It is just people like you who have the capability to be the leaders of tomorrow and we need your goodness and your ambition and your vision for the future of our grandchildren, for your children and for all of the children of the world.

It is difficult to look out and see what might be twenty, thirty, forty years down the road. I sure would not have described our world to be as it is today, forty years ago. But you can look at today, you can look at tomorrow, and you can light a lantern whenever possible.

Your efforts need not be as grand as bringing peace to the world or eliminating hunger, although please never ever quit striving for the ultimate goal of a better world for everyone.

My friends, small efforts from the heart are where real changes begin. At home in our own communities, among those we know and come across every day. In the work we do and lives we touch. Along the way you can say thank you to a veteran, you can give extra food to the food bank, you can set aside time to coach or mentor a child, help paint the home or cut the grass of an elderly neighbor.

Then when you get to that twenty or thirty or forty-year reunion with some old school buddies, you will look back down your road of life and see it well-lit and glowing. And they will say of you, “They made the night a little brighter wherever they would go, just like the old lamplighters of long, long ago.”

Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts with you, but more importantly thank you for being the good people that you are.