David McCullough on the great cloud of witnesses
Thursday, June 18, 2009
In a commencement address at the University of Oklahoma, the beloved historian David McCullough said:
There is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. Never was, never will be. We are all, as were those in whose footsteps we follow, shaped by the influence and examples of countless others — parents, grandparents, friends, rivals. And by those who wrote the music that moves us to our souls, those whose performance on stage or on the playing field took our breaths away, those who wrote the great charters which are the bedrock of our system of self-government. And so many who, to our benefit, struggled and suffered through times of trouble and grave uncertainty. And by teachers. … I want to stress as emphatically as I can the immeasurable importance of teachers.
