Well, I feel like I'm in uniform right now, you know?
This is exciting.
Well, first of all, thank you so much for that introduction.
Usually I get introduced as Ciara's husband,
so that was cool.
(audience laughing)
Yeah, and let me start by answering the question
that is on so many of your minds:
yes, she is here, too.
(audience cheering)
She's back over there.
Yeah, level up, level up.
So, you know, President Hanlon,
members of the board of trustees, faculty,
honored guests, thank you for inviting me today.
What an honor to be here today.
And most of all, congratulations to the class of 2022.
(audience applauding and cheering)
Now my father, Harry Wilson,
Dartmouth class of 1977, had a favorite poem,
and it's by Langston Hughes.
"Mother to Son."
And maybe some of you know it, but he memorized this poem
and he would recite it all the time to my brother,
my sister, and me.
And he would do the voice, because you gotta do the voice.
He'd say, "Well, son, I'll tell you,
"life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
"It's had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up,
"and places with no carpet on the floor.
"Bare."
On one hand, graduates, you don't need me,
or even Langston Hughes to tell you
life isn't always easy or fair.
Today you're graduating from an incredible school,
but these four years probably weren't
the typical college experience you'd imagined.
Shutting down when the pandemic hit,
missing your sophomore summer,
figuring out what the heck a Zoom call is.
And then coming back here and not just
bringing this campus back to life,
but making it better, and stronger, and fairer than ever.
See, every graduating class has an achievement to celebrate.
But you, class of 2022, you did something really special.
You all should be so proud of that.
And you didn't reach that moment alone.
You had people, parents, you had family members,
faculty, coaches, staff, friends, mentors,
people who loved you enough to push you harder
and further than you could ever, ever imagine you could go.
They're celebrating with you,
and they deserve a big round of applause.
(audience applauding)
See, the thing is, this is their special day too.
And I'll be honest, this is also a special day for me
because in a very, very real way,
Dartmouth made me the person I am today.
See, I'm not a Dartmouth graduate myself, that's for sure,
and I know, nobody's perfect, but three of my uncles are.
Uncle John, class of 1980; Uncle Richard, class of 1985;
And Uncle Ben, the class of 1973.
And he's here today.
Uncle Ben can you please stand up for me?
(audience applauding)
That's the one and only Uncle Ben.
And then there's my dad,
Harrison Benjamin Wilson III; Harry.
AKA HB Productions, Number 29.
See, this year, along with his classmate,
your president Phil Hanlon, right here,
you can give him a round of applause.
(audience applauding)
My dad, HB Productions 29, see, and Phil,
they would've celebrated their 45th reunion.
And yet, I bet my dad's Dartmouth experiences
wasn't so much different from yours.
See, he explored the White Mountains with the Outing Club,
shivering his way across the green
during those long New Hampshire winters.
He ate Mile High Apple Pie at Lou's.
I went to Lou's today, and I may have had a little bite
of Lou's apple pie, who knows.
But it's pretty darn good.
And my dad, you know, he majored in history.
See, his independent study on busing and school integration
and spent late nights studying in the Baker Library
right here behind me.
Now he never told me this directly,
but he also probably played a little Pong, too.
(audience laughing)
And I bet he was good.
So to say my dad was my role model
would've been an understatement.
See, he played two sports in college.
He played football and baseball, just like me.
And people thought he was too short,
sound familiar?
to make an impact on the football field.
So he walked onto the team and earned his spot.
In fact, one of his teammates was your coach,
and is your coach, Buddy Teevens,
who I'm proud to call a mentor and a friend.
(audience applauding)
My dad, he loved to compete.
He loved winning.
Senior year as a wide receiver,
he set the single-season record for yards and catches.
He was All-Ivy and All-East, baby.
And a lot of what I do on Sundays
looks like it comes naturally,
but I learned a lot from that from my dad,
my brother, too.
He's over here as well.
So my brother taught me a few things.
But what my dad taught me, the way was his experience
at Dartmouth's transformed not just his life, but mine.
It goes way beyond the field.
Now, just to be clear, I'm not giving my dad all the credit.
My mom, Tammy Wilson, now she's the best.
She sacrificed daily, late nights working at the hospital,
tons of prayer.
She helped me reach my dreams.
But standing here at my father's alma mater,
looking out over this place that helped him
become the man he was,
it's impossible not to think about his legacy.
And living with legacy
is what I wanna talk to you about today.
Now, legacy might seem like a strange topic
for a commencement speech because, I mean,
this is your beginning.
You're just starting out.
But graduates, if there's one thing
I hope to accomplish today, it's to challenge you
not to wait to think about your legacy
and what that will be.
Because legacy isn't just something you leave behind.
It's something you build, something you add to every day.
My dad, he didn't get as many days as he deserved.
I miss him so much, but because he lived with legacy,
he's never really gone.
I hear his voice all the time.
So as you leave this campus and build your own legacies,
I wanna tell you a few things my dad said to me,
things he knew would one day be a part of his legacy.
Things he still says to me, even now.
Let's go back about 20 years.
I'm in 10th grade, 14 or 15 years old,
growing up in Richmond, Virginia,
and I've been playing high school football.
And I gotta say, I was pretty good.
You know, I was All-State.
And I know I've got skill, and all that,
but having skill isn't the same as having a dream.
Anyway, one week my dad and I,
we take a flight down to Peyton Manning Passing Academy
in Thibodaux, Louisiana.
And when I say Thibodaux, I'm talking about real down south,
like real down south.
And so now when we get there,
we're in this crummy, I mean, terrible, terrible hotel.
And the only room they have
is right next to the laundry room.
So you can hear the washing machines going all night.
(imitating thumping machine)
Smells kinda funky.
I mean the good times.
But my first day of camp, they picked 12 kids
who get to work with the one and only Peyton Manning,
and I get picked.
Peyton tells me, of course, in his voice,
"You can really spin that ball for a little guy."
(audience laughing)
Now that night, my dad takes me out
to this hole-in-the-wall gumbo spot.
I mean, Louisiana gumbo.
Real, real spicy-type gumbo.
And we stay there for a while because, of course,
we don't wanna go back to that crummy hotel,
and we're talking, and he says,
"You know, you could play
"against the Manning brothers one day.
"You could play in the NFL."
And I was a confident kid,
but I must have given him a look like, "Dad, are you sure?"
Because he looked me right in the eye and said,
"Why not you?
"Why not you?"
Class of 2022, I have a theory that we're all born
with gifts, with skills,
but we're not always born with dreams.
We need someone to plant that seed like that spark.
And my dad's way of lighting that spark
was a simple, three-word question.
I wanted to play two sports at NC State,
and people said, "There's no way you could do that."
But I could hear my dad's voice in my head, "Why not you?"
Graduating in three years; why not you?
Staying at quarterback instead of switching positions;
why not you?
Building businesses; why not you?
Playing in the NFL, winning a Super Bowl;
(scoffing and chuckling) why not you?
Seeing this hot, long-legged singer named Ciara
for the first time in a music video.
(audience cheering)
I mean, her little smirk of a smile.
I mean, come on Russ, come on.
Why not you?
(audience laughing)
So graduates, I'm not here to tell you
every dream is gonna come true for you.
I mean, my dreams of being like Mike at my height,
those didn't come true.
But I am here to tell you that every dream,
every dream is going to come true for someone.
And why shouldn't that someone be you?
Asking yourself, "why not you" is part of what I mean
by living with legacy.
See, I've been lucky enough to meet all kinds of people
who were living the life they've always wanted,
but they have different goals,
but they reached those goals in different ways.
But there's one thing they have in common.
They all believed it was possible.
Throughout your life, you're gonna have plenty of chances
to give up on your dreams.
I can't tell you how many opportunities I've had to quit.
But if you've got that voice in your head saying,
"Why not you?" that helps you keep going.
And it helps you keep working,
because if you believe all things are possible,
well, that still means you gotta put the work in
to make it happen.
Why not you is a winner's mentality.
It's about dreaming and delivering.
It's a question that doesn't just make you confident,
it makes you try harder.
My dad was right.
11 years after he asked me that question
in a restaurant in Louisiana, eating that spicy gumbo,
I played my first game against Peyton Manning.
And it's funny how life comes full circle,
because now that I'm in Denver with the Broncos,
Peyton's working with me every day,
and making me better and better every day,
because I still have dreams.
I wanna win more Super Bowls,
build more businesses, and own an NFL team one day.
And as I go out and pursue my dreams,
I'll keep hearing that same question
over, and over, and over again: why not you?
Now, as you can probably tell at this point,
my dad was a pretty confident guy.
But something I loved about him,
something I know he worked at,
and worked hard to pass on to his children,
is that he knew confidence and humility.
Confidence and humility can go hand in hand.
I remember one time my dad and I were driving back
to Richmond from my grandfather's house in Norfolk.
And it's 2:00 a.m. and I'm in the passenger's seat,
asleep, knocked out cold.
My mouth is hanging wide open.
I got drool all over the window.
And my dad wakes me up, banging on my shoulder,
just, "Son, Son, Son.
"What does this mean to you?
"There's a king in every crowd."
Now, I've gotta be honest,
It took me a while to figure that one out,
but it stuck with me.
I have a wristband I wear every day.
And when I look down at it, I read those words
my dad said to me: a king in every crowd.
So let me tell you what that means to me now.
First, I'm a Christian, so for me personally,
a king or queen in every crowd means
that whatever I do, God is watching.
But no matter how or what you believe,
that idea still matters.
You should make every decision, live every moment
as though someone you care about is paying attention.
My dad used to say, "You never know what scout
"or GM is watching you."
But then he'd say,
and the most important thing he'd say is,
"You never know what little kid is watching you, too."
That's the other part of a king or queen in every crowd.
No matter where you go, no matter how big you get,
the most important person in the room isn't you.
It's the person who you can serve.
See, there's nothing wrong with ambition.
Ambition can be a good thing.
And I'd imagine in a school like Dartmouth,
we've got some ambitious people out here.
But your ambition has to be in service
of something or someone.
That's what makes it worthwhile.
See, I think about this all the time.
I wanna win many more Super Bowls as possible,
but that's important to me, but what matters even more,
is whether I'm able to reach the next group of kids
sitting in the passenger's seat next to their moms or dads,
talking about their dreams.
Did I inspire them enough?
The kids sitting in the 300 section
all the way in the nose bleeds: can I inspire them enough?
Can I show them that they can do anything?
No matter what you do after you leave this campus,
your life, your legacy will be defined
not by the accomplishments you list on your resume,
or the goals you achieve, but by the impact you have.
My dad always used to say,
"Son, it's not the day you're born, or the day you die.
"It's the hash mark in between."
How are the people around you affected?
What are they gonna say about you?
More importantly, what do you want them to say about you?
That's what living with legacy is all about.
Now so far, the stories I've shared with you
about me and my dad have been car ride stories,
the good times, going to camps and games,
jamming out to the '70s and '80s CDs we used to make.
Elton John; Earth, Wind and Fire; Teddy Pendergrass.
I loves me some Teddy P.
♪ Turn off the lights ♪
(audience laughing)
Little moments of pure joy.
That's part of legacy, for sure.
But this last story's a little heavier.
It's almost exactly 12 years ago,
and I go to visit my father in the hospital room.
And as you know by now, my dad was a proud man,
an athlete, a fighter, a dreamer.
But now, after years of complications from diabetes,
he doesn't have much time left, and he can barely speak.
He's lying in that hospital bed all by himself.
And I sit next to him and I take his hand,
and I start singing one of his favorite songs,
Marvin Sapp, "Never Would Have Made It."
♪ I never would have made it ♪
♪ I never could have made it without you ♪
♪ I would've lost it all ♪
♪ But now I see how you were there for me ♪
♪ And I can say I'm stronger ♪
Tears are coming down his face,
and tears are coming down my face.
And then he says to me, through all that pain,
he says to me, "Just remember, your name carries weight."
It's one of the last things he ever told me.
Your name carries weight.
And graduates, that's the last piece of living with legacy
that I wanna talk about today.
Because what my dad was telling me in that moment was,
"Act as though you matter."
To matter, it can be a scary thing.
Sometimes it's easier to pretend we don't matter,
to go through life as though our actions and inactions
carry no weight.
But they do.
What you do, the little stuff and the big stuff,
will have an impact,
an impact that touches the people closest to you
and ripples out further than you'll ever, ever realize.
And part of your job as a person on this earth
is to never forget that your name carries weight.
You don't have to live your life knowing all the answers,
but you do, you do have to live your life
trying to answer the right questions.
How many people can you help?
Are you able to love amid storms?
Are you able to care for people when they have nothing?
Can you act out of a sense of servitude
without asking for anything?
See, if you can do that, then all good things will come.
A few weeks after I sang to my dad in that hospital room,
I was back in there with my mom.
My dad couldn't speak, but he could hear us.
And at one point I leave the room,
and my mom and I go in the hallway to talk
for about a half an hour.
And before we come back in, I can hear his EKG
right from the hallway, and it's going beep, beep, beep.
And I take one step in the room and I say, "Dad, I'm here."
Then all of a sudden the line goes flat.
Beeeeeeep.
It was one of the hardest moments of my life,
but I knew that even though that seemed like it was the end,
it was really just the beginning, and not the end.
And I think my dad knew it, too.
Legacy.
Class of 2022, life for you won't be no crystal stair.
There'll be tacks in it, and splinters,
and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor.
Bare.
Your journey will be unpredictable,
but I know, I know it will be amazing.
And if you ask yourself, "Why not me?"
if you remember the king and queen in every crowd,
if you carry yourself as though your name carries weight,
then, just then, you'll live a life
and build a legacy you can be proud of.
Thank you, and congratulations
to the Dartmouth class of 2022.
(audience applauding and cheering)
(people chattering)