Ode to senior athletes and former athletes now "Seniors"

On the weekend of Memorial day, I flew up to Rhode Island to participate in graduation events of my former High SchoolPortsmouth Abbey. I had been invited to address graduating senior athletes and next year's captains [including nephew Jimmy Buckley] at the Annual Portsmouth Abbey Varsity Sports Dinner. Thanks to classmate and teammate Ignatius MacClellan several of my Abbey and Harvard classmates also attended.

Headmaster Jim DeVecchi and Athletic Director Al Brown had suggested that my topic should touch on leadership. I was encouraged to talk about my journey of the last year and a half in Stroke rehabilitation. I chose to focus on the benefits I had gained as an Athlete how the experience of competitive athletics had taught me to leverage competition and adversity and the to focus on the "little victories" [progress] and planning the steps to achieve. My hope was to present these connections between my athletic career and remarkable recovery from the devistating stroke to inspire next year's Abbey captains in how to approach their roles for themselves, their teammates and their teams.

I began my talk with an "invocation" of Houseman's Ode to an Athlete Dying Young and ended with a ceremonial passing of a baton to each of next year's captains. I used this artificial ceremony to punctuate my rambling, and to end with a call to action for next year's captains: to adopt the theme "miracles don't just happen" in their new role as a team captain. My intention was to emphasize how significantly my experience in athletics had guided my recovery and to relate that insight as to why their leadership role could make the significant difference between a possibility for acquiring the life altering skills such as those that have supported my "miraculous recovery" and just running around the pastures of Portsmouth in their underwear.

[full text from my speaker's notes]

Time for passing the baton
"When Iggy first called me to propose that I fly up to speak at this dinner, I leaped at the chance – as public speaking was a part of what a did professionally and remains a big challenge both physically and cognitively.So this has been a great opportunity to “do some good- I’ll have to throw a heavy RhoDILAND accent in there – ironically, if I do too well tonight, I put my disability status at risk. So, it’s time for me to present you with a small gift – a special edition of my miracles don’t just happen poster delivered here tonight by my sister – not John Murphy’s sister – Jimmy Buckley’s mother!

As captain it is now your responsibility to work with your coach and your teammates so that you’re not just leading "catholic youth" around or through the cornfields of Portsmouth in your underwear.

Here are a few suggestions from "one made weak by time and fate but strong enough in will" to have seen the kiwi in the buckwheat. And so I have a gift I’d like to pass on to each captain – I've come as far as I can tonight and so I’ll symbolically pass this baton with a new edition of my miracles don’t just happen poster with these additional tips:

• Leverage what can be done to make progress towards those things you dream of doing.


• Develop a road map and know mileposts that will mark progress towards your goals.
• Ritualize the feeling or the image of reaching each “next step.”


• Don’t dwell on the entire distance you have ahead, focus on taking the next, right step.


• Miracles don’t always arrive by leaps and bounds, but by a sequence of small steps in the right direction.
• Cultivate respect and empathy for teammates and competitors.


• The relationships you cultivate with teammates and competitors are a far more powerful source of motivation than a nurturing of individual achievement

Parting thought from Tennyson’s Ulysses

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"Thank you SO much for this therapeutic opportunity to acknowledge that although I am now "permanently disabled", some work of noble note might yet be done.Thank you for the inspiration to do some good as I continue to get well."