Denfeld here I come...

Tomorrow evening I speak to the graduates in the class of '09 at my high school alma mater, Duluth Denfeld High School. It's quite a responsibility to send off these young people into our big world with my words to shepherd them. In attempting to calm down my jitters in speaking before a crowd like this for such an important event, my wife and her friends tell me to remember that it's not about me, it's about them–the graduates and their family members. They are right. No one will notice that I never mastered public speaking or that I lose my voice when speaking publicly. They are focused on their own lives and the meaning behind the journey ahead. I'm simply the catalyst for it all to happen. I wrote a newspaper column about my daughter's graduation from high school in 1988 that appears in my book, Cooler Near the Lake. Those thoughts and many more have been spinning in my head as I prepared for this commencement address. I also gleaned some insights from all of you readers to pass on to the graduates.  I want to thank all of you who e-mailed, written on this blog or on my Facebook fan page (my wife's deed, not mine!) to share your thoughts about what those graduates need to know. I thank all of you and, believe it or not, I am including threads of all of those ideas in my speech. I'll keep you all posted here on this blog to let you know how it goes tomorrow evening. In the meantime, stay tuned...