David Cavell Class of 2002
Channeling the Governor
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CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE SPRING 2010
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program but really worthwhile.” After TFA, Cavell headed back to his hometown of Boston and met with a former fellow intern from the Patrick campaign, who had become the governor’s speechwriter. As interns, the two had once pinch-hit on a speech when the paid staff was out of the office. “He invited me to work with him,” Cavell said. “Less than two weeks after I left the fifth floor of a chaotic elementary school in the Bronx, I walked into the State House and sat down at an oak desk in front
Eugena Ossi / Office of the Governor of Massachusetts
hen David Cavell ’02 tells new acquaintances he’s a speechwriter for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, he is accustomed to hearing a couple responses. Many ask, “Isn’t it weird to hear your words coming out of someone else’s mouth?” But the mischievous wonder, “Do you ever slip in something silly or inappropriate just to see if he’ll say it?” To Cavell, both questions, even if meant in jest, miss the point of what he does. “The governor isn’t a robot. The words he says are his,” Cavell said. “He’s a heavy editor and he knows more about speechwriting than I ever will. After listening to pretty much everything Gov. Patrick has said for the past three years, I’ve developed a good sense of how he feels about the world in general and about specific issues. When I’m writing, it’s not my voice that I’m hearing, it’s his.” Politics has been in Cavell’s blood since he volunteered as campaign coordinator for a Massachusetts legislative candidate the summer after graduating from CA. During his senior year at Tufts University, he interned with the media department of the Patrick campaign. But after college, he was accepted into Teach for America (TFA), which recruits recent college graduates to teach in under-resourced public schools. From August 2006 to August 2007, Cavell taught fourth grade at a public school in the South Bronx. “I don’t think I realized when I was at CA just how massive the gap is between the best and worst schools in this country,” he said. “It was shocking to me.” The teaching stint had highs and lows. “I held a parent-teacher conference in a homeless shelter. That’s not something you ever forget,” he said. “And when you see a kid who is every bit as smart as you were as a child, and reminds you so much of your friends when you were young, but is growing up in such a violent environment, it’s very hard. TFA is a complicated
of a twelve-foot window overlooking Beacon Hill. That was an adjustment.” Cavell, officially Speechwriter and Deputy Director of New Media for the Governor, loves his job. With lead times that vary from fifteen minutes to several weeks, he relishes the challenge of speechwriting. “It’s a learning process,” he said. “One of the things I learned at CA is that you really have to get over your fear of failure. You have to be willing to do something that doesn’t work so that you can figure out what does.” Among Cavell’s proudest accomplishments are a speech announcing that Massachusetts would welcome same-sex couples from anywhere in the country to marry and another commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Little Rock Nine’s integration of Central High School in 1957. “Helping prepare remarks that would be delivered to eight of the Little Rock Nine, about whom I’d learned in a history class at CA just five or six years earlier, was unforgettable,” he said. All this keeps Cavell excited to arrive at work every morning and to stay late into the evening. “Governor Patrick is one of the most intelligent, thoughtful, and engaged people I’ve ever met. He really believes in his role as a public servant,” he said. “Ultimately, what matters to me is that I can be part of the governor’s overall plan to make the state a better place.”
David Cavell ’02 and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick