By Jill Goetz
Borrowing from Erma Bombeck and Oprah Winfrey, Senior Convocation speaker Bertice Berry obviously struck a chord with her Barton Hall audience May 24. Riotous laughter and more than a few sniffles could be heard from the 2,100 graduates, relatives and friends as the television personality shared in their pride and described her own experiences as an African-American woman and mother with moving anecdotes and witty one-liners.
Berry has had her own talk show on the Fox network and
appears frequently on others' shows, including "Oprah" and
"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Members
of the senior class chose her to speak at convocation, which capped a week of
activities both on and off campus.
In a lecture both intimate and inspirational, Berry exhorted the graduates to appreciate their choices, learn from their parents and chase their destiny. Some of her observations:
·"You all have microwaves in your dorm rooms? We made grilled-cheese sandwiches on irons! I'm not that old! Computers in your dorm rooms? Our computers were the size of our dorm rooms!"
·"When I got [my sister's] children, I read every book I could find on raising children, every book I could find, because I had no idea.... and one of the main things [they tell you] is to give children choices. And I gave them choices: 'Would you like peanut butter and jelly? Or would you like a hot dog? Would you like grape juice, or would you like cherry juice?' One day I got so frustrated that I asked them, 'Do you want me to beat you in the K-Mart, or do you want me beat you outside?'"
·"I'm the first child in my family to graduate from college at all. But I found out that every woman in every generation before me had a desire to be educated. So much so, that my mother at 79 reads a book every day. . . . So I'm not the first. I'm the first one that got in, but there was all of this behind me that made it possible for me to get here."
·"I had a philosophy class once . . . the professor would hold up the textbook and ask, 'Is this book real? Is it really real? Then how do we know that it's real?' 'Excuse me,' I said, 'I know it's real because I paid $59.95 for it.' 'That's good,' he said, 'Let's go with that feeling; how do we know you bought the book?' 'I said, 'You trying to say I stole it?'"
·"Now you know that the most important questions to ask every day on a regular basis are, 'Why am I here now? Why was I born at this time? Why am I graduating with the class of 1997 that was able to raise $81,987?' What, you didn't have the other $13?"