My parents finally grew tired of attending my graduation ceremonies and finally gave up on them. They loved me but found it almost impossible to follow me from school to school. What started in Altus, Oklahoma, continued to Waco, Texas, to Ft. Worth, to Princeton, NJ, and to Louisville, Ky. It could have been worse: had I an even decent grasp of math, I probably would have ended in Baltimore, MD., at Johns Hopkins, but that’s another story. Thankfully for Mom and Dad, my math “disability” spared them of that possibility.
Of all my graduation ceremonies, I have only snippets in my memory bank of the speakers, though I feel quite certain there must have been an outstanding one hidden among them somewhere. Yet in every one of those ceremonies, I do remember someone calling my name, “David Whitlock.” At the time, that’s what mattered the most to me.
Over 4 million high school students were to have graduated in the United States in 2021. Add to that the 4 million or so college students graduating and almost 2 million graduates from graduate schools, and you’ve got a lot of names to call. Each person’s name is vitally important to that person, as though they are the only one among millions. If you don’t think so, watch the face of the person whose name is mispronounced, or worse, the recipient of a diploma with the wrong name called.
Dale Carnegie said, “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
I, for one, have trouble remembering names, so I have to work on it all the harder.
Last week, I was sitting in the office of the Lebanon Enterprise. For some strange and mysterious reason, my email attachment with this column didn’t go through. The nice person who came to my assistance told me her name because I asked her. After all, names are important. But she then had to tell me twice (I asked her, admitting my difficulty at remembering names) before I got it.
Entire books exist on the topic of remembering names. (I just can’t remember their names.) But I know what works for me: word association and repetition. In the case of the gracious assistant at the newspaper office, her name happens to be the same name as a little girl in my church who likes to draw me pictures or write phrases depicting her interpretation of what my sermon means to her. Often, she seems the better preacher. Because she apparently pays some attention to what I’m saying and takes the time to respond in her unique way, I can easily call her by name. So, I remember the assistant at the newspaper by associating her name with the girl at church, both of whom have been a help to me, though in different ways.
It’s troublesome; it takes effort; but it’s worth it.
When I was a college student, I had a professor I liked, but every time he would see me on campus, he would smile, look at me and say, “There he is.” It was a way of saying, “I know you’re in my class, but I have no clue what your name is.”
Now, there was another professor I also liked. When I saw him one day on campus, he surprised me. “Hello, David,” he said. I stopped walking and was momentarily speechless. I automatically felt important. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw on Instagram a few weeks ago, a piece about him when he retired. Students down through the years commented about how much of an impact he had made on them.
To all the graduates this year: congratulations, hopefully, your name was called. But even if it wasn’t, you still matter, if to no one else, at least to yourself, to whom you should always be true. You can therefore carry your name with pride, holding your head high, grateful for all those other names in this world that contributed to your place in the family of life. And having crossed this stage of your journey, you can call others by their name, mindful that everyone has value and worth.