NHS Remarks - May 3, 2006

Good evening, Mrs. Mirkin, Mrs. Adler, officers of the Wellesley High NHS, Nathaniel, Myriam, Caroline and Reed, parents, and most importantly this year's NHS inductees.

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you this evening. It is a great privilege to have the opportunity to address such an outstanding group of students. I am also grateful to be here this year because I feel an especially close tie to the WHS NHS at the moment -- not only is my son, Andrew, a member, but both the current and immediate past presidents -- Nathaniel Stein and Andrew Mccauley have been summer interns in my state house office -- and were a tremendous asset, I might add.

I would first like to congratulate all of you on achieving this recognition. As the parent of three children who have attended WHS, and as a former Wellesley School Committee member, I know how rigorous this high school is and how difficult it is to maintain the GPA necessary to be considered for membership. The fact that you represent only a small % of the class of 2007 is a testament to your accomplishment. You may not appreciate it now, but this honor is one that is recognized across the country, and one that you should be proud of achieving for the remainder of your life.

It is significant to me that the NHS promotes not only a strong commitment to academic achievement but also, according to its national constitution, and I quote "a desire to render service." It is this principle of the NHS on which I would like to focus my remarks this evening.

By taking a few moments to highlight the positive aspects of public service, I hope that each of you will be inspired to make a commitment to such service at some point during the course of your life. Too often today when we hear the term "public service," we think only of elected officials and more often than not, of the latest scandal ridden headline or the most recent object of talk radio's contempt. But many people who serve the public and embody the commitment to service that NHS promotes are not elected officials and are not the subject of media attention. Some of them are the people who teach in this building and every other public school in this country; others are the members of our armed forces who have been called to serve on foreign soil -- including some recent graduates of this school, at least one of whom was an NHS member. While still others battle life threatening epidemics at the Centers for Disease Control, and some devote their lives to reducing international conflict by entering the foreign service, like our current Undersecretary of Political Affairs at the State Department, a WHS graduate.

The point that I am attempting to make is twofold: first, that there are many people receiving very little attention, who devote their lives to public service and have a direct and positive impact on our daily lives; secondly, and more relevant to you today, there is a wide range of opportunities from which you can choose to serve.

Not everyone will choose to make a career out of public service, but I think it important that everyone become engaged in public service in some way so that you can appreciate and support those who do choose to make it their life's work.

I encourage you all to take a first step toward that end by registering and exercising your right to vote as soon as you become eighteen. It is the people that you elect who set the policies and determine the conditions under which you will live and under which those whom I mentioned above will work. Your votes will set the course of this country's future and if you choose to take a more active role in public service, as I hope you will, your actions will shape that course.

As you think about the contribution that you will make to society, I ask you to reflect upon something that Senator Robert F. Kennedy frequently quoted on the campaign trail which was a great inspiration to me when I was your age.

These words were written by the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw. He wrote:

"Some people see things as they are, and ask why? I dream things that never were and ask, why not?"

If your future is to be better than our past, you will all have to "dream things that never were and ask, why not?"

Thank You.