Mark Sullivan, director of the U.S. Secret Service, told members of the Class of 2007 at Saint Anselm College Saturday to set goals and aim high, but to be flexible enough to take important detours.
Saint Anselm presented degrees to 450 graduates during the college’s 114th commencement held at the Sullivan Arena on campus.
“Class of 2007, go do something big with your education,” said Sullivan, who is a 1977 graduate of Saint Anselm, where he studied criminal justice. “Follow your passions. Take risks. Walk through the doors that open for you. Be flexible. Guard your character and your reputation.”
Sullivan recalled how he applied twice to the Secret Service before being accepted, but only if he would take an assignment in Detroit. He considered turning down the offer, but the detour led him to rich professional experiences and something more important, he said - he met his wife, Laurie, and saw two of his three daughters born in Detroit. His later assignments included protecting Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Clinton. He was sworn in as Secret Service director a year ago.
He received a standing ovation from his soon-to-be fellow alumni after he exchanged his academic cap for a Saint Anselm Hawks baseball cap.
“I stand before you as the director of the Secret Service, but I am also a Hawk, forever grateful to Saint Anselm for nurturing my academic potential and illuminating my life’s path,” he said. “I did not think that life would take me from this campus to Detroit to protecting the President or one day putting my hand on a Bible in the Oval Office, but it did. I am sure that your stories will be every bit as interesting.”
Father Jonathan DeFelice, O.S.B., college president, talked of the lessons and moments of profound insight that students encountered during their four years at Saint Anselm.
“I ask that you take what you have learned here to assist you in allowing yourselves to see God’s presence everywhere in your lives, to develop a profound respect for all human life and to bring that kind of understanding to your families and friends and to the world of which you become part today in a new and exciting way,” he said.
“Even though when you leave this building today you will not return to live on this campus, you can remain by your choice a vital member of this Saint Anselm Community,” he said. “You can continue to be guided in life by the principles you learned here. Time and distance are not obstacles to remaining connected, to living well, to pursuing the good of others, to acknowledging gratefully the goodness of others and the good that others have done for us.”
Politics major Amy Regan, of Buxton, Maine, gave the student address, telling her classmates the time to “indulge ourselves as kids” has ended. “We owe people our hearts as nurses; we owe schools our minds as teachers,” she said. “We owe the business world our ingenuity; we owe our communities our moral strength as police and politicians, and we owe the world the service and hospitality demonstrated by the Benedictine community.”
Awards presented included the Student Award for Service and Citizenship. It went to Emerald Russell, a psychology major from Winterport, Maine. A cum laude graduate, Russell worked with a school for blind and visually impaired children in Tanzania, bringing two students to the states for medical treatment and orchestrating the funding and construction of a sun-safe play structure for the school. She also worked with orphans in Romania, to bring awareness of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and took a Spring Break Alternative to Costa Rica to work in an orphanage.
Also, English Professor Denise Askin received the Faculty Award from the Saint Anselm chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Elizabeth Ossoff, psychology professor, presented the award.
Sullivan received an honorary degree, as did Professor William Farrell, who has taught sociology at the college for 50 years; Christine Lynn, chairman and CEO of Lynn Insurance Group, in Coral Gables, Fla., and an avid supporter of heath care and higher education, and Bridget Shaheen, executive director of Lazarus House, which provides food, shelter, job training and other services to 8,000 individuals in the Lawrence, Mass., area.