Scholar-in-Residence Jim Sheeler's Commencement Speech

Dec. 18, 2008

A few years after taking my last class at CU, I stood backstage at the Boulder Theater, in front of a 90 year-old man, and tried to figure out what to say. During his lifetime, the old man had learned the secrets of the ages from African bushmen and fought in World War II, he had worked as a journalist, philosopher and author. He had fought Apartheid, and was later knighted. Several days earlier, I had interviewed Sir Laurens van der Post over the telephone from his home in London, to preview his speech to thousands of people over four days in Boulder. After he read my story he asked to meet me. So I stood there in the theater, just before one of the last of his speeches before he would die. After fumbling over an introduction, I managed to say something to the effect of, ‘If only I could follow in your footsteps…’and he held up his wrinkled hand to stop me. He set his hand back on a wobbly cane. “My dear man, look at your feet,” he said. I looked down and he continued. “You have perfectly good feet. They make perfectly good footsteps. Don’t follow. Make footsteps of your own.”

***

Looking back over the lessons that have taught me the most during my career, I realized he was right. It’s not famous people who showed me the way – it was everyday people who showed me where to look.

In the past 15 years I’ve interviewed rock stars and congresspeople, I’ve interviewed millionaires and celebrities, but I don’t remember those conversations – nothing stands out. I’ve interviewed Seven Nobel Peace Prize winners including the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, but the scenes that stay with me – the ones I’ve truly learned from – are the quiet moments, the moments that teach, and offer up an everyday wisdom that speaks to us all.I discovered this early on in my career, as I worked at the place most journalists dread, the Siberia of the newsroom – the obituary desk. It wasn’t long before I realized that if you listen, really listen, it’s a place filled with that shared knowledge.

When I started as the obituary writer, I didn’t want to write obituaries with the same formulaic style that most newspapers used. I didn’t want to write about famous people – I wanted the stories that hadn’t been told – people whose names had never appeared in the newspaper. I wrote about what moved me, what taught me. No matter what field of mass communication you’re headed for, take people someplace they’ve never been, someplace they can learn something, and they’ll come with you every time.

***

One of those places, for me, was a man’s home in Boulder, a few days after he had lost his wife to breast cancer. Her name was Aimee Grunberger, she was 44. We sat together and he told me that a few days after she was diagnosed with cancer, she was reading the newspaper and on the front page there was an inane story about politicians squabbling about some petty issue. Remember this was just a few days after she was diagnosed. She threw down the paper and shook her head in frustration. “These people need cancer,” she said. “Not enough to kill them, but just enough to make them realize what’s important in life.” Then her husband looked at me and said, “You know, it’s not that there’s too much cancer in the world – it’s just that it’s poorly distributed.”Everyday wisdom.While working on another obituary, I learned about a man with an IQ higher than probably anyone in this room who ended up homeless, with a long beard, pushing a shopping cart. Still, he never lost his sense of wonder. If anyone asked, really sat to listen, he would share with them his philosophy: “Adventure is merely inconvenience rightly considered.” Think about it, considering the hurdles in front of you after you graduate. “Adventure is merely inconvenience rightly considered.” No matter what happens after today, if you approach tomorrow with the right mindset, you all are in for one amazing adventure.

About ten years ago, I sat in a home with a man who wanted to tell me about his wife. They had been married for more than 50 years, and she had just died. We spent the day going over scrapbooks and telling stories. The day wore on and he made me dinner – he was lonely, and just wanted to talk. We talked until there was nothing else to say, and then it was quiet. Neither of us spoke, and the house was silent.“Listen,” he said. “You never realize how much noise an old woman makes until she’s gone.”

By focusing on the obituary beat - this part of the paper that had been largely forgotten by other reporters - I was able to make it my own, and I think those stories played a huge role in opening the door for me to larger newspapers. That’s a lesson for all of you. Look for the forgotten places – that’s where opportunity hides.

***

I have another quote cut out and pasted on my computer. I think it spans all of the disciplines in here - journalism, public relations, advertising and academic research. It was written by Greg Lopez, a columnist at the Rocky Mountain News who specialized in writing about folks whose names few people knew.

“I don’t write stories to show how people are different. I try to show how people are the same.”

At our best, that’s what we all do. We look for common threads, lessons, stories that speak to us all.

***

We all know about the problems facing the industry, about how hard you’re likely going to have to work for little initial pay. Once again, I have a little more everyday wisdom for you. It comes from another story I was writing - I was tagging along in Kansas City with an airplane pilot, back when airline pilots made six-figure salaries, and he wanted me to take me to a restaurant he had heard served the best Barbeque in town. He brought me to the restaurant, which was only open for four hours a day. We got in, and he asked the owner, “why only four hours a day? Look at this line? You could stay open seven days a week.” The restaurant owner looked up, smiled, shrugged and said,

“How much money do you need?”

Yes, you will have to sacrifice in this touch economy, in this tough job market. In order to get ahead, you will have to work long nights without complaining. You will get stuck on stories or jobs that consume part of you – the best passions do – but you have to resist allowing them to consume all of you. I can’t tell you how many times family members have told me, as I was late for dinner, “Just type a period!” What’s so hard about that? Type a period.” Maybe that’s what they should put on my gravestone (sorry, obit writer talking again).  My point is to remember the balance. Yes, I’ve been lucky enough to win a bunch of awards, but I think I only received them because I didn’t write the stories to win them.

I remember, not too long ago, I sat in the home of one of Boulder’s many World War II heroes. Bill Bower, who was one of Doolittle’s Raiders – one of the men who took off from an aircraft carrier to bomb Tokyo, knowing they didn’t have enough fuel to return. Movies and books have been made of the feat, and the heroism, but when I went to his home, he had no medals on the wall. I asked him where they were and he dismissively said they were in a drawer somewhere. I asked him why he didn’t have them out, and he told me the story. Years ago, he said, he arrived home from work and found that his kids were playing “soldier” and had all his medals out. Some of them were torn up and bent. At first he was furious. “Then I realized,” he said, “That in a way, that’s all medals are – things for kids to play with.”

Then he told me, “Why be known for the medals, when you can be known for the kids.”***There was another servicemember who taught me innumerable lessons – the man at the heart of the story that consumed me for the past five years. Steve Beck was saddled with one of the most difficult tasks that could be asked of anyone – the job of walking up to a stranger’s door, and telling them that their son or daughter was dead – the duty of casualty notification officer. He approached it with a simple guide – the golden rule. “You treat that family the way you would want your family treated in the same situation.” This should not be a rule discounted by any of us – we often approach families in very tragic situations. But think, before you approach that grieving mother, brother or sister, if that were my mother what kind of reporter would I want to be standing there, holding that pad. That’s the kind of reporter you need to be.

***

In the past fifteen years, I’ve told thousands of stories. We all have – mine just showed up in the newspaper. Yours may show up on the internet or in advertisements or in some form none of us know. But you all have stories - we’re built of them, and we’re hard-wired to hear them – we have been since we were painting on the walls of caves. If you strip everything down to our core, isn’t that all that’s left? We’re all made up of a string of stories.In the first line of my book, a Marine sits in a car, looking out at the clear, white blanket of snow that covered the sidewalk to a stranger’s home. The first line is, “There were no footsteps in the snow.” The first step he would take out of that car would shatter the pristine quiet of everything. Yet he had to do it. He had to walk into the snow, carrying the message. In the most difficult situations, the best of us find a way to move forward.

Graduates of the University of Colorado School of Journalism and Mass Communication 2008, I ask you, Look down at your feet. I’m serious. Do it, now. Look down.  Look at your feet, and listen to the same words I heard so many years ago backstage at that theater, and think all the lessons that would follow.

“My dear men, my dear women, you have perfectly fine feet.”Now look back up. Look into the storm of everything ahead, all that you don’t know, and all that is to come.Look directly into the unknown. Stare it down. And make your own footsteps.

This time, we will be the ones who follow.