Convocation Address by Headmaster Drew Casertano
As we begin Millbrook’s 80th year together, as we set sail on a voyage where the destination is clear but the course is uncharted, I’m thinking of three G’s.
The first is Grace Murphy. Grace is a Millbrook student, though she is unknown to many of you because she was here for just a few months last year. Grace has cancer. She is doing well enough to live with her family and attend her public school on Fishers Island for 11th grade. We hope that she will return to Millbrook next year. I stay in touch with Grace and follow her ups and downs through her parents’ journals on a website called Caring Bridge. The journals inspire me with the courage and optimism I see in Grace and her parents. They remind me of how petty my problems are. They encourage me to make the best and the most of each day.
The second G is Nan Gingher, who was a good and dear friend to some of us on the faculty and staff. She passed away in 2001. Nan was disabled with arthritis, spina bifida, and failed kidneys. By the time I got to know her in 1990, she spent her days in a wheel chair or on dialysis at the hospital. Nan was also the toughest, wisest, and most positive person I have known. Among the many things she taught me is that the most meaningful lessons are learned at the most difficult moments. There is value and learning and beauty, even when we are most uncomfortable. Her sage advice was to stay in those moments, to accept them, and to embrace them. As much as I understand that wisdom, I have a hard time applying it. Still, the lesson stays with me, and I aspire to its practice.
The third G is Guatemala. I spent three days there in mid-August as a board member of Safe Passage. In that role, I am a member of the search committee to select the next executive director of the organization. For new students and faculty, Safe Passage provides nutrition, hygiene, and education for approximately 600 of the poorest children in Guatemala City, children who, without Safe Passage, would exist on what their parents and older siblings scavenge from the Guatemala City dump, the largest landfill in Central America and, basically, one of the world’s most disgusting places. The workers are called Guajeros – there are thousands in the dump at one time – and they toil in every imaginable kind of garbage – food, excrement, dead bodies, hospital waste, and more.
My assigned task was to spend the first day at the edge of the national cemetery, which overlooks the dump, to introduce each candidate to its realities and the necessity of Safe Passage. From about 9:00 – 4:00 a Safe Passage staff member and I showed four different candidates various views of the dump as vultures circled above us. We watched as yellow truck after yellow truck – a stream of hundreds that became thousands as the day wore on – dumped anything and everything into the enormous area that we call a dump, and that thousands of Guajeros call their place of work. As the trucks backed up, frighteningly close to huge, lumbering, dangerous bulldozers moving trash farther out in the ravine, Guajeros laid their hands on each side, indicating that this was their trash to pick through. During that day, I watched as the Guajeros labored in the most wretched conditions made worse in the afternoon by a torrential downpour. But, here’s the thing, these people are proud that they earn an honest living. They are proud that they don’t sell drugs or steal to stay alive. Instead they do what they can with what they have. They work. I made a promise, as I always do in Guatemala, to work harder to be more grateful for all that I have and, as with the examples of Grace and Nan, to waste less time on my petty discomforts, anxieties, and needs.
I share the examples of these three G’s for your consideration and inspiration. And they prompt me to offer this advice – there are only two things that you can control this school year, and in your life for that matter. Those two are your attitude and your effort… your attitude and your effort. In terms of your attitude, I encourage you to be positive, optimistic, sensitive, ambitious, and generous. And when you are sad, disappointed, frustrated and angry, work even harder to be positive, optimistic, sensitive, ambitious, and generous. This approach will change your life for the better, and it may have the same effect on those around you. In terms of your effort, work hard. There is no way to take full advantage of the Millbrook opportunity and to succeed here without working hard. And there is no way to take full advantage of the opportunities that lie before you in life and to find success and satisfaction without this. Along with making a strong, consistent effort, working hard means being disciplined, organized, and willing to ask for help. It’s not easy, but it is necessary.
Stay positive and make the effort. Let us make the most of the opportunity and promise of this year.
