141845_01_18_7:toc 7/26/13 11:48 AM Page 13
LEFT: Malcolm McKenzie presents the award to a beaming Beth Waitkus.
ACCEPTANCE SPEECH BY BETH WAITKUS ’79 C o mmu n i t y
S e r vi ce
o the Hotchkiss School Alumni Association’s Board of Governors and to the Hotchkiss community, I offer my most heartfelt thanks for this 2013 Community Service Award. I accept it on behalf of the more than 1,000 men who’ve participated in the Insight Garden Program at San Quentin State Prison and whose lives continue to be transformed through connection to nature. I also extend my love and gratitude to my family and friends, and the faculty who are here today – and some who taught me many years ago – and who have, in many ways, been part of my journey. And to all of the current students who are planting the seeds of future care, community service, and building a better world. Finally, thanks to Patty O’Connor who has so graciously helped prepare the logistics for this visit and been there every step of the way– you’ve been amazing! I’d like to start off with a quote I first discovered when reading “The Little Prince” – in my prep year French Class,
T
Aw ard
Remarks
taught by our dear Bob Hawkins – “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” So I’d like to briefly share the story of how I got from Hotchkiss to San Quentin State Prison. For some context, I grew up in these bucolic hills of Lakeville, CT…playing in the streams, wandering the woods, and sailing on the lake. Nature was then, and still is now, my refuge. When I entered Hotchkiss in the early ’70s, the School had just welcomed girls for the first time the year before. These were years of great transition. In my first year, there were only four girls in my prep class. We were, upon reflection, pioneers and faced some interesting challenges in those early years of coeducation. Those were also times of great national and international upheaval. We had Watergate and an oil crisis. As the “outside” world swirled around us – in this bubble – we remained somewhat protected and only remotely aware of the massive shifts under-
way. Back then, we didn’t have email, computers, or cell phones to connect us, only television, radio, and each other. And as part of that larger “Shift,” I shifted too, thanks to an evening in the Walker Auditorium with then-consumer advocate Ralph Nader. He spoke passionately about the auto industry in the context of consumer rights and large corporate interests – at the expense of our environment and people. At that point, I didn’t even know what fossil fuels really were, where they came from, or why I should care. But he stood up for the rest of us, demanding large systems change, and predicted back then what is now our current state of environmental degradation, the gaps between the rich and the poor, and important issues of social justice. For me, he planted a seed. Although I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I “grew up” after graduating from Hotchkiss and even college, I did feel a restlessness to make a difference. What I did know intuitively was that I wanted to integrate my love of the natural world with my work. So over the years, as an activist, I began to find my place in the world. I dabbled in politics and ran social marketing for federal programs in Washington, DC. In some of those arenas, my head and heart weren’t always aligned. For me, it was uncomfortable to be doing someone else’s bidding…corporate public relations is where I ended up working after I moved to the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1990s. So in 2001, when jets flew into the World Trade Center, I finally woke up. From then on, I knew I had to live a life more aligned with my heart. To do that, I would have to reestablish my faith in human capacity for transformation and goodness. Through a serious of synchronistic events, the year following 9/11 actually led me straight into prison. I wanted to practice “being present” with what I thought then would be a difficult population – prisoners. When I was asked to start a garden-
S p r i n g
2 0 1 3
13