Endings and beginnings

President Thomas K. Hearn Jr. presents a diploma in 1989, the year a storm knocked down the commencement tent, in one of the historical photos in his new book, On this day of endings and beginnings.

Hearn commencement speeches published

The commencement speeches delivered by former President Thomas K. Hearn Jr. have been compiled in a new book, On this day of endings and beginnings. The title of the book came from one of his speeches.

The book contains the full text of each of his commencement addresses, from 1984 — “The University’s Sesquicentennial Year: My Freshman Year” — through 2005 — “T.K. Says Goodbye” — as well as historical photographs.

“Once a year, Tom Hearn spoke in a deeply personal way to an audience like no other: members of a graduating class,” Provost Emeritus Edwin G. Wilson (’43) wrote in the book’s introduction. “And the mood was different. And Tom understood that mood. He knew that for this precious moment something more was needed: something idealistic, something that transcended the occasion, something that came from the heart. And so he allowed himself to be Tom Hearn the man rather than just Tom Hearn the president.”

Hearn’s first commencement speeches were generally brief remarks on campus events, such as the loss of the diseased Quad elm trees in 1987, or world events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the the Persian Gulf War.

But the speeches grew increasingly personal in later years as he spoke movingly about the lives of his mother, father and a favorite uncle; of the deaths of four undergraduates in 1996; and of his own health scares following heart surgery in 1995 and brain surgery in 2003.

“I discovered that the more I was able to convey my heart-as well as my head-the better able I was to connect with my audience,” Hearn wrote in the preface to the book. “Although the subjects have ranged widely, I always took as my overall theme Pro Humanitate, the Wake Forest motto.” Hearn ended each speech with a “charge to the graduates” to live lives of service.

The book is available for $20 in the College Bookstore on campus and at the Hanes Mall Deacon Shop, or by calling 336.758.5145. Profits go to the Louise Patton Hearn Scholarship.