b'MAY YOUR TORCH BURN BRIGHTDr. Mihan House McKenna Taylor 95(In accepting the 2019 Distinguished Alumni Award)Thank you, Greensboro Dayand forge them into somethingme, those qualities of leadership, School! It is an honor to benew, like glass blowers use flamesscholarship, sportsmanship, drive, recognized for what I doblowingto create works of art from sandand determination, and told the things up for the betterment ofand fire. Right now, youre in auniverse, Not today. I will take humanity! In all seriousness, theglass mold created by your familiesthese fragments and remold myself motto of the US Army ERDC isand your teachers. Youll have theinto something new, something Making the World a Safer, Betteropportunity to take the shape theybetter. So I swept up the shards, Place, Every day. My career hasgave you, or break the mold andand forged myself into a pitcher to reflected that in all that I havebecome whatever you can dream.pour out a better future for others. done, and it has been a fun, wildWhen I was sitting where you areI beat back the darkness, beat my ride at that. Ive been to places mostnow, I thought the mold my pastlife expectancy, rebuilt a future people will never see, and blowngave me was the only option, andthat I fully intend to inhabit. up things most people would neveradmittedly, the goblet I becameToday I can say thank you to the imagined were flammable! We jokewas fabulous: a sparkly vessel toschool that gave me those tools. that our motto should be, There istoast my own successes! no day that cannot be made betterSo I say to you all, you are more through the proper applicationBut like the time that truck metthan the sum of your fractures. Do of C4, and while it is true thatthe great mechanic in the skynot be afraid of shattering, because detonations can be good therapy,due to a perhaps overzealousGDS has given you the skills to you can also get it wrong. Like theand incautious application ofbe your own mold maker. Just as time the team accidentally blew upexplosives, the world can change inI may not have been able to see the field truck instead of the target.an instant. We fear the fragility ofwhat I could become, the Empress Whoops.our own existence, the crystallineof Weird Science and protector perfection of our imagined glasses.of the USACE and Armys basic There can be no explosion withoutAbout eight years ago, my gobletresearch, until I was nothing but a spark. I would like to invitewas obliterated into a millionsand once again, you wont know you all to look to the emblem ofshards: I died in public, in frontwhat you are capable of until you the GDSthe torch. While aof work colleagues and friends,have done it. So I challenge you student here, I imagined the torchcame back, was given two years toto be a pitcher and not a goblet, as a light-bringer, but as I grew,live, got divorced and had to figureto light the fires of your own I realized that fire has a power toout how to rebuild my existence.explosions, and to never let the transform. The nuclear explosionsI have to say, that was a pretty biglight GDS gives you go out. Burn I researched could turn the desertunexpected explosion.bright!sands to sheets of glass. So, too, will you take the discrete grains thatBut I was still holding tight to make up your experiences in lifethe torch that GDS passed to GDS Magazine | 51'