Graduate Student Speaker

Gregory K. Gallup '09
School of Graduate & Professional Studies

"President Derry, Dean Davis, distinguished faculty, and administration, thank you for the opportunity to address our graduating class. Honored guests, we welcome you, and appreciate your presence at this ceremony.

On behalf of all the graduates here today, and those abroad, may I first recognize the many coworkers, family, friends, and professors who have exercised patience, made sacrifices, and offered us guidance, to all who gave us encouragement and support-we earn this degree with you.

To my sisters Ginger and Summer I love you dearly and forever- you are my inspiration.

To my brother Tony and to my best friend Molly thank you for believing in me as I believe in you.

To my daughter Savannah this life is your dream ladder.

To my grandparents Mimi and Pop-pop, who recently passed away -you were the greatest generation.

Finally, I dedicate this achievement, and all that will become of it, to my mother Annamarie, whom along with my grandparents, also passed on during my coursework at Hope. She was and always will be my hero.

I was extended the invitation to speak on behalf of Hope's School of Graduate and Professional Studies. I especially commend those graduates among us who chose to pursue their Master's degree while also working, parenting, or both. Your overwhelming act of dedication, focus, and persistence is a testament to your character and an indication of the capabilities you will bring to your future endeavors.

My road here has been far from easy. While I was a cadet at West Point I had underwent three knee reconstructions playing division one football, I had my right shoulder completely reconstructed from boxing, I survived a strain of cranial meningitis that almost killed me, and I emotionally crumbled under insomnia brought upon by sleep deprivation. After my fourth and final year I was ruled medically unfit for service and I plunged into a deep depression. My career aspirations of becoming a commander in service to our nation fell away. For five years I searched for new meaning down dead end roads. I wanted to be a rock star! I wanted to be a movie star! I wanted to be a world renowned artist! I wanted to be anything but what I was...in search of something big enough to dream about again.

In doing so I came here with a vision inspired by Susan Bauer to reduce world conflict and empower poverty stricken small communities to develop and sustain, a clean water supply. Now I am leaving with a plan. One that I believe can provide every colony from Tijuana to Argentina with the appropriate means to collect and distribute their own clean water-I did this at Hope. For these dreams are the source of an accomplishment that truly endures. They are not faint and fleeting like fortune or fame that just fade away.

For Abraham Lincoln once said, "Give me 6 hours to cut down a tree and I'll spend the first four sharpening the axe." Well...that's exactly what we've been doing here as students, and now - as graduates. We've been sharpening a decisive blade of leadership on the stone of a servant's humility- we've been prepared for servant-leadership. As business leaders, as marriage and family counselors, as educators, and as ministers, we go out now into a time when anything is but certain. Our firm foundations, formed along the frontiers of faith, have arrived when our world needs it most. The bad news is that there is a lot of work to be done. The good news is that there is a lot of work to be done.

Our relationship to God and our relationships with one another are what will deliver us out of a time of terror and into a time of kindness, out of a time of recession and into a time of restoration, out of a time of disillusionment and into a time of hope, and that time is now.

Thank you and may God bless you all."