I am in Boston. It’s 59 degrees, drizzly, overcast, cold.

23 years ago today, on a day exactly like today, I gave the Class Day oration at Harvard’s commencement exercises. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. My mother sat in the rain to see her youngest son give the speech at the world’s most prestigious university and then get his degree.

My Mom’s dead now. My first real boyfriend, Steve O’Donnell Harvard ‘85, is dead from AIDS now. My next door freshman year neighbor Ernie Kearns ‘85 is dead now. My good friend Trey Woods ‘85, possibly the best looking man who ever lived, is dead now. I am still here.

Tonight my friend Willis Emmons ‘81 hosted a farewell party for me as I prepare to step down as the head of GLSEN. Former students of mine came (like Ethan Harris CA ‘93, now a dentist! or Dan Hirschberg CA ‘94, now a PHD candidate in Tibetan studies, who saw my slide show about going to Tibet in 1992 when he was in my class — I take full credit, I told him). Willis had hosted our first-ever fundraiser in 1994, in the same house he lives in now. Founding Board members of GLSEN, like Van Seasholes, came. My first partner Bob Parlin ‘85, his husband Bren Bataclan, and his parents Art and Deb Parlin, came. It was the Alpha and Omega of my career.
It is days like today when I realize I am the luckiest man on planet Earth.

Psalm 23:5-6

Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever