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rations of the last 12 years will provide the thrust, he said. “It is time for you to take over the controls of your lives — the controls of your destiny ... We cheer, and ask that you aim for the stars.
“You have come a long way,” Mr. Fountain told the class, “but you have a long way to go. ”
He warned the graduates to beware of three common causes of failure: physical weakness, mental weakness, and a lack of spiritual focus.
“People who are truly brave learn to live with pain and suffering," he said, pointing to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s battle with polio and Helen Keller’s triumph over three handicaps as examples.
Others fail because their minds are not focused, because they have no sense of purpose. “A mind unchallenged is a waste to the entire world,” Mr. Fountain said. He offered Winston Churchill’s life as a man who overcame an unhappy childhood to become one of the world’s greatest leaders.
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind,” Mr. Fountain quoted from Churchill. He was not only a part of history, the teacher added, “he wrote history. History is being made every day—are you willing to be a part of it?”
Mr. Fountain offered the Greek myth of Pandora’s Box to illustrate the third failing, a failure of the spirit. “The lesson is that we are not always perfect—but we must hold onto hope . . . Without hope life becomes dull, and we stand still. And when we stand still, we actually take a step backwards. ”
He suggested that “much can be gained by relying on the old saying, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’.
“Through hope,” Mr. Fountain told the graduates, “there are always possibilities ... It doesn’t matter where one comes from. It’s where he’s going that counts.”
Superintendent David Gangel told the graduates that “none of us know” what the future holds. He suggested four points to remember: Continue to grow, build on the solid
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