Belmont Hill Commencement Speech June, 2017
“Go find your own Calcutta.”
I am very honored to be asked to speak today at a school that really changed my life. Belmont Hill has done so much for me, for my brothers and now for my son Charlie who is a rising 4th former. I would never be where I am today or who I am today… ….if I had not gone to Belmont Hill.
One of the best things Belmont Hill gave me, was an amazing band of brothers. The friendships I made on these playing fields and in these classrooms have helped carry me through the past 40 years of ups and downs.
After Belmont Hill, I spent six years getting a 4-year degree at Harvard.
My real-world education began a couple years after that, when I received an unexpected invitation to go to China as a volunteer on a medical mission.
At the time, I was working in advertising, making a lot of money, living the highlife. I had little interest in helping anyone but myself. But I said yes, and a month later I found myself in rural village in China. It was my first time traveling to the developing world…
At an old, run-down hospital I met a 9 year old girl whose name in Chinese meant Colorful Cloud. She was born with a severe cleft. Her parents couldn’t read or write – they could never afford the surgery she needed.
I watched in awe as her surgeon took her lip apart and then put it back together like a jig saw puzzle. Afterwards, she looked beautiful.
The surgery she waited 9 years for… took just 45 minutes. When she woke up, a nurse ran to get her a mirror. Colorful Cloud’s hands were shaking as she slowly raised the mirror… I kind of hoped she might scream with joy – but she didn’t make a sound. I was beginning to think something was wrong when a single tear drop slid down her cheek. And then another. And another. Nine years worth of tears came pouring out of that little girl.
That simple surgery changed her life.
And it changed my life too.
Soon I was going on missions to the poorest countries in the world. I got to see first-hand how billions of people are fighting to survive…
They live in houses like this…. in India
…..slums of Calcutta…Bangladesh …. world’s largest refugee camp in Somalia…
This is Haiti… where 400 pound pigs forage in rivers overflowing with sewage and human excrement.
The poor work at jobs like this…. Carrying cow dung, dirt, bricks, and wheat….working 12 hours a day for 50 cents or 75 cents a day….
They farm…. they fish…. the same ways they did thousands of years ago….
In Katmandu, I watched peasants swarm piles of fresh garbage…looking for food….
In many places, children don’t go to school – they work …
begging…. scavenging …. 3 and 4 year olds working in the fields ….
But no matter how hard they work, billions of people go to bed hungry every night.
In Somalia, I met a baby girl, 7 months old who weighed just 7 pounds.
I met this boy in Bangladesh, working in a market, you can see his ribs…
In Haiti, hunger pains are called Chlorox because it feels like bleach eating away at your stomach. To ease the pain, lots of people eat cookies made out of mud.
It’s ironic that the leading cause of death in the U.S. today is obesity-related heart disease. We’re literally eating ourselves to death…while billions of children and adults are starving.
I keep this mud cookie on my desk, as a reminder of how lucky I am to be born in this country. And for the opportunity to travel to so many other countries.
They say the world is a book, and those who do not travel read one page. It’s true, if you don’t travel – you will miss so much.
Travel has taught me many things I never learned at Harvard.
I learned a lot about the power of a parent’s love for their child….from mothers who carried their babies on their backs for days to reach our hospitals…. through jungles, deserts, war zones…
From fathers who sold their only possessions…. their rickshaws… their cows… their land…. so that their child could get the surgery they needed….
I learned about courage from thousands of children I met….…
who were born with holes in their faces….
….crippled with clubfoot… so they can’t walk or run…
….severely burned and disfigured from horrible accidents….
Kids who were born blind, or worse, kids who slowly went blind….
Surgery can fix all these problems – but 2 billion people from Calcutta to Haiti are so poor, they can’t afford it.
Most of these kids spend their entire lives waiting for help that never comes.
And yet, they never complain. They never give up. They never quit.
I learned about compassion and character from good Samaritans I met along the way….
I met Dr. Hashimi in Kabul. 
All his family and friends fled Afghanistan. But he stayed to provide surgeries for the poor. His hospital’s been attacked by the Taliban multiple times.
After graduating from medical school, Dr Adenwalla took his bride to a small missionary hospital in the jungle where they’ve been providing free surgery for the poor for 50 years.
Dr. Sonya in Tanzania. A world-class eye surgeon who restores the eyesight of thousands of blind children every year in Africa.
Find your own Calcutta: When he was 18, Subodh watched his 55 year old father die from poor medical care. This motivated him to become a surgeon and build a hospital with his Dad’s name on it. 90% of his patients he treats for free.
Some of the people who taught me the most – had no education at all….
In Inner Mongolia, I met a woman who came across an abandoned newborn baby left on the ground, crying, in a dirty blanket. She kept walking. She passed by two more times. The last time, it’s getting dark, starting to snow, she brings that baby home even though she and her husband can barely feed themselves. They’re so poor they live in a cave. They kept that girl and raised her as their own.
Bernard had been waiting 52 years for cleft surgery when I met him in Haiti. When he saw hundreds of children with clefts standing in line, he said, operate on me last, I don’t want any children turned away.
I learned about the power of hope in Uganda. This saint runs a hospital and a leper 
colony with no electricity or running water. I’ve never met anyone who was so positive and full of optimism. Here he is telling me how proud he is of the love and respect his nurses and doctors provide for lepers who have all been abandoned by their families…
For 5 years, I went on medical missions where 400 children would show up but we could only operate on 100 kids. So 300 children were turned away. It was heartbreaking to watch. The moms would cry, beg, throw themselves on the ground. I complained about this a lot. But the top surgeon would shrug and say that’s just the way it is.
Then I went on a mission to Vietnam where I befriended a little boy who loved soccer. We nicknamed him Soccer Boy.
I just assumed he made the surgery list. When he didn’t, so mad, I quit and started a new charity that could help every kid. 18 years later, Smile Train has provided 1.5 million surgeries and has never turned away a single kid.
Instead of sending American volunteer doctors on missions, Smile Train empowers local doctors and nurses to do the surgeries. It’s a much better way to help very poor – but very proud – communities become self-sufficient.
Look at the pride in these faces… that’s the secret to Smile Train’s success…
These doctors and nurses are my heroes – with very few resources and little support,
they make miracles happen every day in places where miracles are in short supply!
They can straighten the feet of a child born with clubfoot in just a few weeks.
They can rebuild the face and body of a severely burned child…
They can take this girl who has been blind since birth – and give her her eyesight back with a 15-minute surgery that costs just $300.
Imagine what you would pay to get your eyesight back…
I met a young American surgeon who had just moved his young family from Minneapolis to Ethiopia. I was shocked. I asked why he left his comfortable life in the U.S. to come to Africa – he told me he wanted to lead an “intentional life. ” He said he didn’t want to make money – he wanted to make a difference.
My last story is about a trip to Texas. After two flights, I drove 100 miles to a tiny town near the Mexican border to thank one of our major donors. Big Jim Ed was 84 years old, in a wheelchair, on oxygen, sitting in front of a bowl of pills at his kitchen table when I sat down. He told me this pill is for his blood pressure, this was for his heart, his diabetes, his liver… When I showed him pictures of kids his donations had helped, he started crying. I thought he was crying for the kids… but he was really crying for himself. He told me he had 7 million dollars in the bank… but he was all alone. He said he wished he had married, had had kids, had traveled, had been nicer to people. I thought to myself, they don’t make the pill he needs…. his biggest problem is regret.
I bet he would’ve given back every penny of that $7 million to live his life over again.
As I drove 100 miles back to the airport, I thought how lucky I was to go on that first trip to China so many years ago – that experience changed the entire direction of my life.
All those trips I took, the amazing people I met, all of it changed me….for the better.
]It taught me that helping others is the most selfish thing you can do – because you always get back much more than you give.
My only regret…is that I wish I figured it out sooner. So my last bit of advice for you gentlemen is to start thinking NOW about what kind of life you want to lead….
What kind of person do you want to be…
And how are YOU going to make your life mean something…
A wise woman gave me this same advice when I was just a little older than you but I didn’t listen. Her name was Mother Teresa, and she spoke at Harvard in 1982.
“Go find your own Calcutta”
She said “You have never really lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” She urged us to go out and make our mark on the world.
“Go find your own Calcutta” she told us!
Afterwards I got to shake her hand as she was leaving. I can still remember how frail she looked. But her hand was strong when she shook mine, looked me in the eye and asked….. “Can you help?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I was just a kid – like you guys. But she planted a seed that day. And her question haunted me for years.
Today, 35 years later, I know what she was talking about.
Because I found my own Calcutta.
And I hope that one day, each one of you will find yours too.
Thank you and good luck.
