Preston Bryant reminds Lynchburg College grads to serve their communities

By Ray Reed

Published: May 10, 2008

Linking Lynchburg College’s stewardship actions this year with the goals of his boss, Preston Bryant, reminded graduates Saturday that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has a focus similar to the college’s “Year of the Environment.”

Bryant, secretary of natural resources in Kaine’s cabinet, delivered the commencement speech to 550 graduates Saturday, ending with a challenge that they follow up their successes by serving others in their communities.

“You have no choice. You must do that,” said Bryant, who at 43 has been a businessman, a member of Lynchburg City Council, and the Virginia House of Delegates.

Along the way he taught college freshmen the epic poem Beowulf, and helped protect hundreds of thousands of acres of natural resources.

The college awarded 454 bachelor’s degrees and 96 master’s degrees on Saturday, spokeswoman Shannon Brennan said.

It gave honorary doctoral degrees to Bryant, to Martha Randolph Daura for contributions to the college’s arts program, and to Loren Pope, an education editor of the New York Times who cited LC as one of 40 colleges that change people’s lives.

“While I think I’ve had some pretty cool life experiences,” Bryant said, he was under no illusion the graduates would be impressed. “I’m keenly aware that in 10 years you will be hard pressed to remember who your graduation speaker was.”

A Lynchburg native, Bryant told the graduates, to their chuckles, that he left town for college and became “a proud Randolph-Macon College Yellow Jacket.”

Bryant noted that Lynchburg College President Kenneth R. Garren, in keeping with the school’s 2008 environmental theme has shown “an intoxicating enthusiasm for restoring College Lake — a great project, though with certain challenges, not the least of which is the ticking clock.”

The lake, part of the campus, is filling with sediment as development occurs on the streams feeding into it.

Bryant also said the college’s nearly 500-acre Claytor Nature Study Center probably will attract students “who are intent on dedicating their professional careers to the natural sciences and environmental education.”

The lake and the nature center are two ways the college is creating a greener tomorrow, he said.

Those actions mesh with the Kaine administration’s successes in environmental matters.

The administration is on its way to a goal of protecting 400,000 acres from development, providing $700 million to clean up the James River and Chesapeake Bay, creating an energy plan that focuses on conservation, and studying climate change.

“Governor Kaine has 19 months left in office, and the intensity of our work is getting even more so,” Bryant said.