Office of Governor John Baldacci Baldacci, John E

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Good morning. This is Governor John Baldacci. College seniors – and soon high school seniors – across Maine are in the midst of graduation season. This is a time of great hope and opportunity for our graduates. To those of you celebrating this milestone, congratulations. Like you, I’m also graduating this year. And like some of you – I bet – we will be moving back home. I have been blessed with the opportunity to serve my hometown of Bangor, my State and my country in elected office. Throughout more than 30 years in government, I have had the pleasure to meet many wonderful and inspiring people: Presidents, poets, statesmen and world leaders. The people I find most inspirational are the young men and women of Maine, our State’s next generation of leaders and thinkers and creators. The world our graduates will face is much different than the one that was waiting for me when I graduated from college. But there is also a fundamental and core value that runs deeply through Maine’s communities. In 1966, Robert F. Kennedy delivered a speech at the University of Capetown, South Africa. He asked the world to tear down the barriers of race and religion, social class and ignorance. The challenge he gave to students was this: “This world demands the qualities of youth”; he said, “not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the...

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Maine State Library

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Digital Maine