Speakers reach for words that fit the times

Doubtless, the class of 2009 would love to work hard and change the world. But it's the largest graduating class to date, with 1.6 million members, and it's facing the worst unemployment rate in a generation. Instead of making their way into the real world, many new grads will be returning home to live with their parents.

The crowd-pleasing "Wear sunscreen" kind of speech won't cut it this year. Too flip for the times. So what's a commencement speaker to do?

Despite an unemployment rate of nearly 9 percent, many speakers say they'll offer positive words of hope. Of course, it's easy for them to say: They all have considerable careers. But some plan to recount their own rocky starts upon college graduation, while exhorting the newly minted grads to hang in there.

The commencement speech has traditionally been a forum for words of wisdom and inspiration studded with clichéd messages about aiming high, giving back, working hard, and doing what you love. But this year such words have a hollow ring. This year the speeches are bound to have fewer clichés and more sympathy.

"I got chosen because someone did exhaustive research into the many jobs from which I was fired," quips Marc Brown, creator of the "Arthur" children's books and PBS series, who will speak Saturday at Lesley University. After losing his seventh job, he went home depressed and his son asked for a bedtime story. That was when his iconic aardvark, Arthur, was born.

His message: "It's doing what you love to do, and persevering. Find what you love and stick to it. It's so important. Life is short. It sounds like a simple message, but it's worked for me."

At UMass-Amherst on May 23, alumnus Earl Stafford, founder and CEO of Unitech, will also talk about determination and hope. Stafford, who spearheaded the $1.6 million "People's Inaugural" and runs a foundation to help the needy, has his own story of overcoming adversity. After he started Unitech, a telecommunications systems company, a major contract was canceled and he was $45,000 in debt. "Lights were turned off. Phones were turned off. Bill collectors were knocking at the door."

He plans to speak about the silver lining of dark days. "We're in economically depressed times, but it's an opportunity. Difficult times separate those who are strong from those who are weak. Those who will succeed are those who will bypass rejections and keep on going," he said in a telephone interview.

New graduates may relate to the experience of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who graduated from Williams College in 1975 in the midst of a tough job market. She waited tables for a year on Martha's Vineyard, then entered law school. On Sunday, Coakley will offer some practical advice to Framingham State College graduates: Volunteer.

"I'll tell them that rather than stay at home and bemoan your fate, volunteer for something you're interested in and care about," she says. "Think of yourself as an apprentice. Treat it as a job where you have to show up and be responsible. You can build a resumé and skills and develop a mentor relationship, and then you're in the best position when the job market does turn around."

Car czar and philanthropist Don Rodman doesn't have any jobs to offer, but he has taken on some volunteers. Rodman, owner of Rodman Auto Group headquartered in Foxborough, says he'll speak at Bay State College's commencement from the viewpoint of a hard-working kid born in Dorchester to a single mother.

"I think the only thing people have to sell is themselves" is what he says he plans to tell graduates Sunday. "You're going to find a lot of companies are going to want to hire younger people who are energetic, and they can pay them less. I'd love to get more young people with me, but right now I'm only taking volunteers."

US Senator John F. Kerry is speaking May 29 at UMass-Boston and he concedes that the bar is higher this year for commencement speakers. "There's less tolerance for the blah blah, cut and paste, pablum messages that too often are the hallmark of graduation speeches, and I don't blame those graduates one bit."

Kerry says he has met "a ton of 4.0 GPA grads-to-be who would've been snatched up by employers in past years who are still looking for a job." But because of what he calls a dangerous world, Kerry plans to talk about why their college degree is more important than ever in helping to solve problems.

On Sunday at Boston University, Congressman Michael Capuano will remind graduates there have been bad times before, and they should focus on the long term. "The bottom line is, no matter how tough it is, we are all lucky enough to be born here in America, where there are more opportunities than anywhere else, and they're lucky enough to be graduating from one of the best schools in the country," he says. "They've got a great preparation to run the world when it becomes their turn."

Few people are better equipped to speak about surviving tough times than CBS news correspondent Kimberly Dozier, who was critically injured in a 2006 car bomb attack in Iraq that killed an American soldier, an Iraqi translator, and two CBS crew members. Dozier will speak June 5 at Wellesley College, her alma mater.

"I tell all groups of students I meet with right now that they're at the right end of the spectrum to get work - they're cheap labor, they're eager to learn new skills, especially when it comes to the media where the walls have broken down between print, radio, and video and sometimes it takes a while for the older generation to catch up with that," Dozier says.

Dozier, who now covers the Treasury Department for CBS, says she'll tell students that she's living proof that "you might not end up doing what you thought or hoped or wished you'd do, but you have to ask yourself: Why did I choose this particular vocation? Was it to change minds? Policy? Are you still getting a chance to do that? Then go with it."

Author Dennis Lehane told graduates of Emmanuel College last Saturday that the future of the country is brighter than it was four years ago, when he also gave a commencement address.

"When the economy was booming, I was literally apologizing for [my generation] screwing up the world to this degree. And now I feel like it's a much more hopeful time to be a college graduate than it was four years ago," he said in an interview before the address. "There's a feeling that we're on this big ocean liner and it's just begun to tack. It's going to take a while to get to 180 degrees again."