Speakers often promise to keep their remarks brief, but this speaker warned the crowd he would go on for awhile. Eastern Virginia Medical School president Harry T. Lester opened a recent awards acceptance speech by noting that such speeches “generally come with some obligation to speak, and as many of you are aware, I am known for brevity. Not so this time.”
Why? The venue, the Economics Club of Hampton Roads, Va., “requires something with heft, what I call an adult speech,” Lester told the audience. “Not my style. But here I am, so to those who expected my usual, please get comfortable. And like the then-rector Dr. Clancy Holland told me when I first joined the EVMS Board of Visitors: ‘You might learn something.’”
That’s refreshingly old school, is it not?