Passion. Persistence. Luck. Those were the key elements to Dick Ebersols heart-felt and extemporaneous address Sunday at Sacred Heart Universitys 44th Commencement held under sunny skies on Campus Field.
There are no eight-hour jobs. I can tell you how important it is to bring your passion to the workplace, the 62-year-old chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics and co-creator of Saturday Night Live advised the assembled graduates (848 bachelors degrees and 13 associates degrees) and their families.
Ebersol was presented an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree as were Sidney Callahan, Ph.D., an author, psychologist and senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, and the Most Rev. Norberto Strotmann, MSC, bishop of the Diocese of Chosica, Peru.
Earlier in the program, the prestigious Bishop Walter W. Curtis Medal was awarded to a graduating senior for the first time in university history -- John Vales, of Somers, N.Y., who earned a B.S. degree in business. SHU President Anthony J. Cernera, Ph.D., who made the presentation, spoke of Vales going beyond the norm to become a liver donor for a nursing student at the university, and how his selfless act meant many weeks in the hospital. John told me, I didnt know I was signing up for four surgeries.
Ebersol, who has spent 21 years at the helm of NBC Sports in a career studded with success, spoke of landing an entry-level job with ABC Sports at the Le Mans sports car race in France. He was 20 years old. I got hired as a gofer go for coffee, go for cigarettes, he said. Encouraged, he temporarily dropping out of Yale and joined ABC in New York City, this time as a regular go-fer. I was naturally blessed with the stubbornness that nobody was going to outwork me and be around more than I was.
Persistence? Selling the Saturday Night Live concept at a meeting of NBC senior executives. Itll never work, the senior researcher told the gathering.
Persistence? Much later, after joining NBC Sports, mounting a propaganda campaign to convince the committee for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta to have Muhammad Ali light the Olympic flame. Evander Holyfield, another heavyweight champion but with a seedy reputation, was the original choice. Ali is an Olympic champion, and he has proven his political courage again and again, said Ebersol, who won his case.
Luck? Returning to SNL in the early 1980s and meeting the first host of the new season actress Susan Saint James. Within six weeks she was my wife, and now, 29 years later, shes still the best thing to happen to me.
Luck? Meeting a 19-year-old extra in a corridor at NBC. That 19-year-old extra saved Saturday Night Live for the next two years. Eddie Murphy. His talent at 19 was a great as it is today.
And persistence in the face of adversity, whether it is the loss of a job, a breakup or the loss of a loved one. The latter was a reference to the death of the youngest of their three sons, 14-year-old Teddy, in the crash of a chartered jet in November of 2004. Its tough, its heart-breaking, but you pick yourself up, he said. No pity parties.
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