Shining moments at commencement ceremonies

The two commencement speakers — Hale and Hanks — appeared on television over and over that day. My heavy heart began to get lighter at the happy news.

Lee Sang-eon

The author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo. “We want to give you two gifts. The first is a gift to you. The second is the gift of giving,” said Robert Hale, the founder and CEO of wholesale telecommunications provider Granite Telecommunications at the commencement ceremony of the University of Massachusetts Boston on Friday. “The first $500 [in the envelope] is for you … and the second $500 [in another envelope] is a gift for you to give to somebody or somebody else or another organization who could use it more than you. Share in the joy of giving.”

An outburst of cheers erupted after Hale’s remarks. The lively moment of the jubilation was captured by CNN. In the commencement speech, Hale said the graduates deserve a compliment as they weathered “these trying times,” referring to the hardship they suffered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Citing the “addictiveness” of donations, he expressed hope for more donations by the graduates. As 2,500 students graduated from UMass Boston that day, he handed out $2.5 million to them.

Hale, 56, made a fortune with the business of establishing a secure intranet at companies by using existing telephone lines. The 551st wealthiest man in a Forbes survey, he is also the co-owner of the Boston Celtics. As the team’s value soared in the NBA, he also benefited from it. Referring to his loss of $1 billion from bankruptcy during the dot-com bubble burst, he joked, “Have you met someone who lost a billion dollars before? There’s a very good chance I’m the biggest loser you’ve ever met. And now you guys are getting career advice from me.” Compared to him at that time, they were far ahead of him, the billionaire said.

Hale did the same with the graduates of Quincy College. At the graduation ceremony of the school in 2021, he gave them two envelopes each containing $500. Famous as a philanthropist, Hale donated $30 million to his alma mater Connecticut College. The amount of his donation reached $52 million last year alone, according to U.S. media outlets.

On the same day, cheers and laughter were in full swing at Harvard University. In a speech there, Tom Hanks, the two-time Oscar winner, joked about receiving an honorary doctorate of arts from Harvard even “without having done a lick of work [except for playing a Harvard professor in The Da Vinci Code movies].” “It’s not fair, but please don’t be embittered by this fact,” he said. “I don’t know much about Latin. I have no real passion for enzymes, and public global policy is something I scan on the newspaper just before I do the Wordle […] And yet here I am closing — closing for Josiah, Pallas, and Vic,” he quipped, referring to the three student speakers who proceeded him.

In the commencement address, Hanks underscored the importance of truth, warning against a world where empirical facts, scientific data and common sense are ignored, and bald-faced lies dominate human consciousness. He demanded resisting the propaganda machine from Harvard graduates. After getting infected with the Covid-19 virus with his wife in March 2020, he donated his own blood to help scientists develop cures after he recovered. As he was stepping down after finishing his speech, Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow called him “Wilson’s bestie, Buzz’s buddy, Ryan’s savior [and] America’s dad,” reminding the audience of his impressive roles in the movies. The president gave Hanks a Wilson volleyball with “HARVARD” inscribed on it as a respect for his 2000 film “Cast Away.”

The two commencement speakers — Hale and Hanks — appeared on television over and over that day. My heavy heart began to get lighter at the happy news.

Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks says, “Truth is sacred” at the commencement ceremony at Harvard University, on May 26. [BBC NEWS]

At the time, the Korean media were packed with sad news — from deepening suspicion over special favors to the children of the members of the National Election Commission when they applied for it to a lawmaker’s two-week-long disappearance from the political stage over his mysterious investments in cryptocurrencies to pointed attacks against opponents in political circles — throughout the day. That’s nothing new. If such sad news can solely be attributed to the press bent on highlighting them instead of shedding light on the bright side of our lives, it could be better.