 The Immaculata Medal, the highest honor this college can award, is awarded for creative leadership and evidence of sound scholarship, and is presented to a person who maintains a lifestyle consistent with the highest values and aspirations of Catholic higher education. The medal is awarded this year to Fred McFeely Rogers, affectionately known to two generations of America's children as Mr. Rogers. His creative leadership enabled Fred Rogers to establish and develop the longest running children's program on public television, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. After more than 20 years, the show remains the outstanding example of television's ability to participate in the total development of America's children. Family Communications, the nonprofit corporation organized by Mr. Rogers to produce his program has branched out into almost all forms of communications technology, including audio cassettes and computer software. Evidence of the sound scholarship of Fred Rogers is found in the themes of his programs. Their goal is to teach children about the problems all young people have. Problems of establishing a sense of self-esteem, about childhood anxieties, about self-control, about learning to express feelings of love, sadness, anger, and trust, about the difference between fantasy and reality. That Fred Rogers has succeeded in this endeavor is shown by the receipt of every major award for which his program is eligible, including the Peabody Award and Emmy Awards. Fred Rogers has received over 20 honorary degrees and is the subject of an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institute. Mr. Rogers was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister in 1962. His seminary training included work with children, and he has continued this apostolate in an exemplary fashion through the media. He has provided us all with a model of quiet perseverance in doing good while remaining in the public eye, truly a lifestyle consistent with the values which Immaculata seeks to impart to its students. It is my pleasure to present Fred McFeely Rogers to Mother Marie Genevieve, who will award him the Immaculata Medal, and to present him to the graduating class who we will then address. Mr. Rogers. To some of the friends that I met for the first time today, that beauty isn't just outside. The people that I have met here already show me that Immaculata's got beauty inside, and I would imagine that that would have been very satisfying for you all to experience that during your time here. Well, one evening, as I sat at the piano, I began to play a song almost without thinking. Little by little, the words came to me, and I realized I had known that song for many years. It was called, When You Wish Upon a Star, and it begins by saying, When you wish upon a star makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you. If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme. When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. I remember when I first heard that song in the movie Pinocchio. I had such a warm, wonderful feeling to think that wishing on anything like a star would make things come true. That was such a splendid idea to me. I had lots of wishes and lots of dreams. As I sat playing that song and thinking those words, it dawned on me how important it was that all my wishes and all my dreams had not come true. But it was equally important that some of them actually had. And I wondered about the difference. Why didn't I become a concert pianist or a veterinarian? Why didn't I learn shorthand or the Japanese language or get to be a commercial pilot? Those were all things I had wished for years ago. In fact, I probably wished on more stars for those things than I ever wished to be in television. What does make the difference between wishing and realizing our wishes? Lots of things, of course. But one main thing I think is whether we link our wishes to our hopes and our hopes to our active striving. It might take months or years for a wish to come true, but it's far more likely to happen when you care so much about it that you'll do all you can to make it happen. At some point in your life, you must have wished to be a college graduate. Well, by now you know what it took to make that wish come true. And so do your parents and so do your teachers and your friends. When I was a freshman in college, I met someone who knew a very famous songwriter. That songwriter was a person I had always wanted to meet ever since I was a little boy. I was convinced that if I could just play my songs, I think I had five. That songwriter would introduce me to Tin Pan Alley and I would be an instant successful composer of show tunes. Well, I was able to get an interview with that man and I remember so well going to New York City and all the way thinking this is it. I'd probably have to give up college and get an apartment in the city and my parents would be so proud of me and before long, my five songs would be sung by millions of Broadway showgoers. That's not what happened. The composer was very welcoming to me. He asked me to play a couple of those original songs for him and he listened intently while I played them and sang the words as well as I could. When I was finished, he said, very nice friend. Now how many songs have you written? I told him five and that I had brought all of them. Then he said something very important to me and to my whole life. He said, I'd like you to come back after you've written a barrel full and we'll talk again. Well, you can imagine how I felt. A barrel full would mean hundreds of songs and I had only five. But his counsel was more inspired than I realized for a long time. He knew that if I really wanted to be a songwriter, I'd have to write songs, not just think about the five I had written. Even though I never got to see that man again, I have through the years written a barrel full of songs. In fact, the barrel full is overflowing now, but those songs didn't write themselves. I had to do it. I wished for it and I did it. But what about the wishes that don't come true? I remember a woman who all of a sudden one day said, I'm never going to be a circus clown. It just dawned on her that because she hadn't gone to clown school and had made some other choices and hadn't really tried, her girlhood wish of becoming a clown wasn't going to come true. She wasn't sad. She was just surprised when she realized her resignation. I'm never going to be a circus clown. I know another woman who remembers the time when she knew that her wish to be married and have children would not be realized. She remembers the struggle and the final resignation and then she remembers the outcome of that resignation. Enormous energies were available to her, which she used in developing uniquely creative work with young parents. All through our lives, there are resignations of wishes. As children, once we learn to walk, we must resign being babies. If we just want to be taken care of and not make any effort to grow and do more and more for ourselves, then we can avoid that resignation and just stay a baby. You may know some adults who are still babies. They want to be served all the time. How sad for them not to have been able to experience the excitement of growing from one part of life to another. In fact, you can see the excitement in children as a child grows from creeping to standing and walking. That child usually has very little speech development or other aspects of the toddler's development. It's as though all of that child's energies are bound into that huge task of getting up and walking. Once that task is accomplished, once they're on their own two feet, they get this exciting urge of development in other areas. It's as if they are obsessed with that one task and until it's accomplished, they can't concentrate on anything else. That's an enormous human task, you know, standing upright and walking on our own two feet. That doesn't mean that there aren't some resting places along the way of our becoming. There is permissible rest and regression in everyone's life. Some people call it R and R. I think of it as an important moment when we reflect and receive. In our competitive world, some might call such times a waste. I've learned that those times can be the preamble to periods of enormous growth. Two weeks ago, I declared a day to be alone with myself. I took a long drive and played a tape that my son and daughter had given me for my birthday. When I got to the mountains, I read and prayed and listened and slept. In fact, I can't remember having a calm or sleep in a long, long time. The next day, I went back to work and did more than I usually get done in three days. We all need times like that, times for an extra measure of care. We need them, and so does everyone else. And it's nothing to be ashamed of. We don't have to think it's funny when we feel like we need an extra bit of comfort. I sometimes sing about that to the children, but as you know, I believe there's a child somewhere in each of us since our gifted musical director and pianist, John Costa, is with us today. I'd like to sing one of those songs which help fill up the barrel. I think of its title as permissible regression, but the neighborhood knows it as please don't think it's funny. He's old, but he's still strong. And sometimes you want to snuggle up closely with your own mom. You even need the light sometimes, but that's not bad. Who sometimes feel like this. Some people sometimes feel like this. It's great to know bigger. Somehow things you like to remember. And sometimes you wonder over and over if you should stay inside. Enjoy a younger toy like this. Please don't think it's funny. Lots of people feel like this. Graduates from the class of 86. The name was Alicia White. She's a member of our parish in Pittsburgh. And she loaned me some of her Gleaner yearbooks. And I noticed the writing in the front, all of the autographs practically every one of them said, let's keep in touch. That was so touching to me. I know of a young man who is just about to graduate from high school. His name is Keith. When he was 10 years old, his beloved grandfather became ill. His grandfather had always helped Keith to feel special. They had fished together and camped together and talked about all sorts of things together. And when his grandfather became sick, Keith wanted him to get better. He watched the doctor and helped his grandfather take his pills. His grandfather told him that he was good at that. In fact, his grandfather thought that he was good at a lot of things. That's why when Keith's grandfather died two years later, Keith was sad and angry all at once. But his grandfather had loved him enough and was comfortable enough with him that he could talk with Keith about death and how that happens to all living creatures and that the important thing is how we care about people while they're alive. From that time, Keith was 12 years old. He was sure he wanted to become a doctor. He had been first in all of his science courses in high school and he's been accepted at a college that has a fine pre-med course. Those who know him well know that it's fairly evident that Keith is responding to the loss of his grandfather. But also to the love which helps him mobilize all of his feelings toward constructive resolutions. In eight or ten more years, Keith will probably become a doctor. He says he wants to be a family doctor. My hunch is that he will be. His wish has become a purpose which is grounded in hope. Théard de Chardin writes that someone scrawled the following words on the bulletin board of that great Notre Dame cathedral. Le monde demain appartiendra à ceux qui lui ont apporté la plus grande espérance. The world tomorrow will belong to those who brought up the greatest hope. I don't know your wishes or your hopes. Nobody but you and the people you care to share them with should know them. Wishes are sometimes grand and far beyond the reality of the present. But other wishes are intimate. They are about simple things of daily life, expressed again and again in contacts with other people around us. I trust that you'll feel good enough about who you are to do all you can to help the best of your wishes come true. I wish upon a star where there are whole galaxies that we haven't even discovered yet. Stars way out in space and stars within ourselves that are patiently waiting to brighten up our world. On April 16th, one of my best friends died. We were in college together and stayed good friends forever. As a matter of fact, he wished and worked at being a superb singer all of his professional life. And whenever I wrote my first little opera for the neighborhood, I asked if he would come and help to sing it. No effort was too humble for him so long as the motives behind it seemed right. And so John Reardon and I began giving operas to children and anyone else who would visit our neighborhood. Even when he was singing leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera Company, Jack would come to Pittsburgh to help us make up a new neighborhood opera. So through our 40 year friendship, we've made a barrel full together. And what a delight that mutual work has been. The joys of our times together far outweigh the pain of my loss right now. Even though that seems very real. I wish for you some abiding friendships like Reardon's and mine. As you go from your alma mater today, it's one of the greatest gifts you'll ever know. I wanted to be with you today because I figured that many of you grew up with the neighborhood. And I'm so proud of the way you've grown. I'd like to give you one last song for a commencement present. You and everyone else who wanted to share this special day with you. That song is called, It's You I Like. The things you wear. It's not the way you've been side to you. The things that hide you. Not your diplomas or just beside you. It's you I like to yourself. It's you. Thank you.