I am very happy to be here this evening in a room filled with many friends. In a way it's rather ironic; though I've never taken a single class here, UMass Boston has been an integral part of my educational journey.

I must confess, that journey did not start out all that auspiciously. The first college I ever enrolled in was a night school, Jersey City Junior College. At the end of my first semester, I received both my marks and a notice that the college would not open next year as they had gone bankrupt. No, not a very auspicious start.

Still I pushed on, undeterred, and enrolled at the state university where ROTC was mandatory. Soon enough, like many young men in that situation, I found myself upon graduation looking to a future that included a place few of us knew much about back then, Vietnam. I went to Vietnam in 1966 and served as a platoon leader. Even in those days, there were moments of reflection where I could contemplate a future that did not include the Army. I'm not sure I was quite serious when I wrote to the Princeton Educational Testing Service about taking the Business Aptitude Test. Back then they had a policy that if you were more than 200 miles from a testing site they'd send someone out to administer the test. Half tongue in cheek, I told them if they were careful and took a convoy out Route 13, they might find me at a place called Lai Khe. We compromised and finally, I traveled into Saigon one day and took the test.

As I returned from Vietnam and entered Harvard Business School, I was indeed fortunate. I was also fortunate in my business ventures. But I feel particularly gratified that my banking activities, philanthropic pursuits, and personal beliefs have all been able to converge around a single theme - social justice. To make social justice the driving value system of the publicly traded Wainwright Bank to some may seem eccentric, to others it is a noble experiment.

For me, the personal and historical thread to these endeavors goes back to the days of the Army/McCarthy hearings, which I watched as a child. There, I saw the same voices of intolerance displayed, that were later arrayed against the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the gay rights movement and the civil liberties of people with AIDS. For me, the rights of these groups are all connected threads that weave the fabric of a just society. I believe it important to use the platform the Bank affords to inform, educate, and introduce different constituencies to issues of social justice.

This work, alongside the culture of diversity we've developed at the Bank, is the most important legacy I contemplate I will leave my children.

In all this work, I have never forgotten that important thread that connects through it all, that connects me to my past, to Jersey City, to Vietnam, to the state university. I know it was that thread that first linked me to UMass Boston. Strangely, I first came in contact with UMass Boston through an article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that spoke of the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences. That was when I first met Kevin Bowen and learned of the outstanding work of the Center and its efforts to promote reconciliation and address those consequences directly. It was then that I was introduced to an extraordinary set of relationships. It has extended from Chancellor Sherry Penney, whose enthusiastic support at a Board of Trustees meeting helped bring the Joiner Foundation into existence; to Pham Tien Duat, a Vietnamese poet whose work, thanks to the efforts of the Joiner Center, now receives international acclaim. Recently Robert Pinsky', our Poet Laureate, published a book in which Duat appears alongside of T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost. That thread has also included a young woman I first met in Hue in 1995, who is now a graduate student in American Studies at UMass Boston. People like Nguyen Duy, Vietnam's best-loved contemporary poet, whose work has received great praise in reviews in The Globe and The New York Times and who will be visiting UMass Boston next week.

Duy is a poet who reminds us of the important things. He reminds us that "in every war, whoever won, the people always lost." A hard fact. He is a poet too who urges us in times of cynicism, "not to give up on love." Thoughts worth keeping in mind. Thoughts I have returned to many times. Thoughts I returned to on one unforgettable night in Hanoi when I was privileged to share a stage with the American author Grace Paley and a number of important Vietnamese and American poets who had fought against each other once. There I read a poem written by my son. And again this past January, when I returned to Vietnam on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the end of the war accompanied by my daughter, and travelling with Charlie Desmond and his daughter.

Who could ever measure such moments? True, Harvard may have given me my trade, but my 16-year association with Joiner and UMass Boston has given me an education. It has given me the thread that has connected so much together. Something I am especially conscious of tonight, thirty years and 12,000 miles from that first night where the journey all began.

What can I say upon such an occasion? What can I say to all of you but thank you and that I applaud you. I applaud you for the institutional and personal courage it took to forge relationships with Vietnam against many obstacles ten years before the rest of the world caught up with you. They may study and write about history at other universities, but at UMass Boston they also make it. I will be proud and honored to receive your honorary degree tomorrow, proud to be part of the legacy of such a fine institution.

Thank You.

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