Marriner's graduation speech from 10 years ago

A wave of nostalgia has overcome me. My sister's husband is graduating with his PhD in May. (Yay, Nate!) As my sister makes plans for the giant party they are hosting, I've tried to remember what we did when Marriner graduated. 

The January before the May graduation ceremony, a mentor of Marriner's nominated him to give the student response at graduation, a short speech to demonstrate that graduates can talk, not just be talked at. Surprisingly, he was selected, and therefore required to graduate in May, which ended up being more difficult than expected. But we made it :) Here's what we wrote about that day in our weekly email to our family:

"The day started off well enough until about 7:20, when I was taking Marriner up to practice his talk before the ceremony.  He looked at his paper and realized he was supposed to be there at 7:15, not 7:30.  Oops.  (Even worse, when I got there, NONE of the doors had handles on the outside.  I had to run around the whole building trying to get in, even being stopped by a police officer "Are you Marriner?  They're looking for you over on the other side...") The best part of the ceremony was reserved seats on the 6th row - very nice!  We got seated 5 minutes before the event started (thanks to me forgetting the tickets the first time we went up), which is about how long watching the procession is interesting.   

"We took some nice pictures of Marriner receiving his degree, despite the little note in the program saying, "no photography or videos, please".  Peer pressure did me in.  Joseph (Marriner's teenaged brother) fell asleep while the undergraduates were filing endlessly across the stage, as did Lillian (with the rocking assistance of Aunt Rosie, who IS Lillian's favorite Aunt.  Unfortunately, Lige and Ellis were hanging out with Aunt Nicole, which earned her their "favorite Aunt" status.)  Finally, it was Marriner's turn to speak.  The president of Purdue gave a very nice introduction which made him sound like he was a professor, not a student.  The speech was WONDERFUL!  Marriner was cool and natural the whole time (not like the Alumni Association president before him, who tripped over his words several times) and gave a wonderful speech. The audience was moved.  The feedback was overwhelming.  The photographer said that in 20 years of covering graduation, that was the best talk he'd heard.  An acquaintance wrote Marriner and said that the Trustees asked for a copy of the speech.  A friend of ours was at a dinner hosted by his advisor for all his graduating students where the other students (none of whom knows Marriner) started raving about his speech for no reason.  It was really fun.  It was fun having our family out.  It was fun being in the spotlight.  It was fun calling Marriner "Dr. Merrill."  It was fun to realize that we really had finished what we set out for a mere 6 years ago! 

"Marriner here:  I have to comment here.  Every once in a while, a whole lot of things coincide.  I didn't necessarily 'feel' great spiritual promptings about this, but I knew even back when I was nominated that this would be my topic if chosen, and then 2 months ago we got a new home teacher who is the debate coach at Purdue and went over my written speech as well as listening to me and coaching me through the delivery issue, and there were lots of other things as well. Anyway, it was a special experience.  I hope that it fulfilled whatever purpose it had.
"Anyway, after the ceremony, we took pictures, went to the departmental graduation reception, ate lunch, played frisbee, did an Eagle Scout project and watched a movie.  Marriner got some fun presents, especially a saws-all, his dream toy.  We were sad when everyone had to leave, especially Lige and Ellis, who LOVED having aunts and uncles over.  (They like the grandparents, too!)  We've spent the rest of the week catching up on stuff, re-starting the job search, gardening, etc."

The part that made me laugh the most was that Marriner went to an Eagle Project after his graduation. He hasn't changed! :) 

Remembering all this made me wonder what happened to that speech he gave so many years ago. YouTube wasn't the ubiquitous repository of all world events back then like it is now. I found a little clip with a quote from his speech, but not the full thing. I dug around in our bin where DVDs go to die and found the recording of the ceremony Purdue had given him as a thank you gift. My kids had never seen it. Most of them didn't remember that their dad had spoken at his graduation. They said, "Is that REALLY Dad??" He was younger back then...and he looks like Sam the American Eagle when he's nervous. (Don't tell him I said that...)

I decided to take up a "little" project of clipping out Marriner's speech and storing it on YouTube so the kids could watch it when they wanted to.  As I watched it, I thought, "This is a good speech! I should share it with my friends!" But of course, to share it with my friends, I need to caption it. And the YouTube auto-captioning did a horrible job. Anyway, it took me 2 whole days to get this little video clip for posterity. So all y'all better enjoy it! Because it was a pain in the bum. 

Love, Christine