Text: Cassius Cash’s commencement address to the MC Class of 2021
Cassius Cash, superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, delivered the commencement address to the Maryville College Class of 2021 on May 9. Here is the full transcript of his address, titled “A Message to Our Future.”
I want to have a conversation with you graduates. I know that you have a lot of friends and family here, but I really want to have a one-on-one conversation with you, because today you are receiving a symbolic key to many doors that have endless opportunities, and I want to thank you, Dr. Coker, for this honor. I never thought in a million years as a kid from Memphis that I’d be sitting up here with a honorary doctorate. So I really appreciate you and thank you for that honor. I want to thank the faculty of Maryville College for doing an excellent job in helping these young folks to their journey up to that point, and that’s truly evident by your presence here today.
Graduates, what your parents and the faculty have done to this point – they have sent a message through your success today – a message to our future for a better tomorrow. Your parents and the staff here have undoubtedly written many messages, but I want to give you just a couple to add to this story that you’re making here in real time just today and I appreciate that honor. And the best way I can send a message to my future is to share a few messages from the past that I’ve gotten 30 years ago that I hope would be of use to you.
You will hear me talk about the journey, and we’ve talked about that a little bit from your president here today, he talked about journey. Achievements are awesome. They’re cool right? But the journey is where the magic happens. The journey is where character is built and determination is witnessed by many. Now as a side note, one of my folks will tell you one of the truest things about leadership is being authentic, and I want to share a little bit about myself that I came to grips with in being in this job. Getting this job here, a lot of folks wanted me to talk about my journey. How did the city boy from Memphis become the superintendent of the most visited national park in the country? I didn’t want to share that message. I was afraid to share that message for three reasons. Believe it or not, I’m an extreme introvert. I’ve become a functional extrovert because of the job and those of you that are introverts, you know that you don’t like sharing your challenges, your fears and your failures with people that you don’t know.
The second reason I didn’t want to share my story is because being the superintendent here is pretty cool, and it brings a lot of attention of who’s managing this park, and so people ask me about my journey. So I had to learn to unpack my journey late in life.
And then the third reason, which is one of the most important reasons and why I’m sharing this with you. I didn’t think my journey had any value to anyone else, besides my immediate family, of what I’ve accomplished.
Now Maryville College graduates, your journey has begun today, and today signifies that. I want you to do me a favor, please – to start understanding your journey now, because I guarantee you, it is waiting to be a gift to someone that’s going to be coming behind you. So there are going to be three messages I’m going to share with you that I’m going to send to the future through you.
The first message I want to send into the future is I want you to be clear in your purpose but flexible in your path to how you achieve it. Clear in your purpose but flexible in your path to how you get it. But why do you say that, Superintendent Cash? I’m going to share a little bit of my journey with you. So I went to college, as the president said, to University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. My passion was and is I wanted to help people. I wanted to help people because it was a passion that grew from my mother and my father. My dad is a retired police officer in Memphis, and I used to love listening vicariously through him. The robbers and cops stories, taking bad people off the street, but I also loved hearing about helping families that didn’t have enough money to put food on the table, and he would help them. I learned that. My mom is a cosmetologist, but she just didn’t do hair for anybody. My mom had a gift of cutting hair, wigs particularly, for young kids that were about to go to St. Jude to receive chemotherapy treatments. And sometimes the kids will come by our house after hours, because of school, and my mom would fit that wig on them the way they looked before they began the chemotherapy treatments, and I saw that transformation. It was like “I want to do something like that to transform people’s lives.”
So I went off to University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Now, my degree is a biology, but one thing that the president left off is a pre-med biology degree, because I was determined, I was clear in my passion on what I wanted to do. I played an instrument for about 15-16 years in the band, and one day, I was going to band practice, and someone, said “Hey, Cash, the U.S. Forest Service is on campus, and they’re recruiting for a wildlife biologist internship.” Wildlife biology internship…Memphis…didn’t ring for me. The only thing I could think about …U.S. Forest Service…U.S. Forest Service…The only thing that came to my mind was Smokey the Bear. For older folks, you remember those commercials, “Give a hoot, don’t pollute?” Those things stuck back then, right? So I said, let’s try it because now I’m a junior and I want to go in there and practice my interviewing skills. I need to start learning to unpack my story, so I went into the interview and as you would imagine, I was bombing. They’re talking about wildlife biology and botany and all these things. I’m talking about pre-med stuff. But the moment I mentioned that I was a Boy Scout, that turned the whole conversation around. So at the end of the interview, they said, “Cash, we would like to extend an internship to you to Washington.”
I couldn’t believe it. Feels like today. I can’t believe it. So you would think that would be the hardest part of this story, right? Guess what the hardest part was? I’ve got to go back and tell Mama…that I’m not going to be that doctor that she’s been bragging to her girlfriends about. Instead, this boy is going to go and be out in the woods with Bigfoot. I had to go 10 rounds with my mom before she let go to let me have that internship.
One of the things also the president talked about was my love for Boy Scouts, but I also had this other love for that show Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom, and that show tapped my imagination. One week, I could be in the Serengeti in Africa, looking at cheetahs run and what people would be doing to protect certain wildlife species. The next week, I could be in the Everglades looking at alligators and the importance of wetlands and so forth. That tapped my imagination. What my mom was thinking and I learned this late in life. I want you for a minute to think about your scariest movie. I’ll give you a second there. Think about your scariest movie. That time of the movie when you hear that (makes scary movie sound). And you know somebody’s about to get whacked right, you know what’s about to go down on that. That’s what she was thinking about. At the end of that interview, they said, “Mr. Cash, you have any questions?” I said, “Yeah. I’ve got a question for you.” Now you’re probably would be thinking that it’s going to be how much I get paid, when do I start, those kind of basic things, right? I said, “Yes, sir, I’ve got a question for you.” I said, “I’m really appreciative of this opportunity, but I’ve been sitting here thinking that I didn’t know there was any wildlife in Washington, D.C. for me to study.” And they’re chuckling just like you are right? He said, “No, son.” He pulled out a map, showed where I was in Arkansas and showed that I was going clear across the United States, 3,000 miles away, and you know my mom had a fit about that, right? My baby going out there with Bigfoot.
So fast forward – driving three days cross country, I show up, and the first project I have is …there’s a threatened endangered owl out in the Northwest. Some of you may remember there was this big controversy out West about old-growth forests, or should we be protecting the spotted owl. The forest was for making money for a local timber companies, right, so we had to go out and survey for these owls. So I go through orientation, and they teach me how to hoot for it. It was awesome. So I’m thinking it’s like 5:00. They say, “Okay. We’ll see you back here at 8:30 p.m.” I said, “Excuse me, 8:30 p.m.?” Now, this is where you get involved. Remember that scary movie I was telling you about, you know, that normally happens in the woods? That normally happens at night, and as black people say, it’s always a black guy down first. So I’m going to ask you where does the owl live? This is where you get involved, guys. In the forest. When is the owl most active? At night. So you know what’s going through my head (makes scary movie sounds). I am now that black guy you used to be laughing at on TV, saying you’re about to die. The reason I share that story with you because that was the first time in my life I had to face my demons. That was a long-held scary thought. I had to face my demons. You’re going to have to face your demons. There’s going to be some challenges.
I gave you the first message – be clear in your passion but flexible in your pathways to get there. The second message I want to send into the future is let the curiosity of your success overcome your fear of failure. I’m going to say it again: let the curiosity of you succeeding at something overcome your fear of failure. That’s what got me through those nights. That’s the curiosity that kept me going and saying I’m not going to prove Mama right. I’m going to stick this through and see where this thing can lead me, so the curiosity of your success overcoming your fear of failure.
Now, you heard a lot of cool things about me, and the president really embarrassed me up here with some things that we’ve done. You say, “This is an awesome story, Cash. City boy from Memphis, Superintendent, First African American…” But I want to be straight up with you. This journey was not easy. I’m sure you won’t be appalled if I tell you there are not many African Americans in land management. And then the first or the only is not a comfortable proposition, I guarantee you. You’ve listened to the places I’ve lived. Nebraska. Southern Oregon. It’s not a comfortable proposition, but history tells us that it’s always usually working out to be a worthwhile one. And that’s what keeps me going. There were professional and personal reasons why I wanted to quit. I’m not going to lie to you, I wanted to quit it sometimes. It was tough. Basically, I lost my footing in how I use that determination how I got to that point. That same determination that has you in these seats today.
I want to tell you this. I want you to embrace and put your arms around adversity and challenges. Embrace it. I’m asking you to embrace it because I always share with my staff and I will share it with you: you are not growing as an individual or a leader if you’re always comfortable. If you’re comfortable, something is not right. Keep pushing, even when you catch the flu. At your worst time – a doctor would tell you that’s when your body is fighting it, when you feel at your worst, when you’re uncomfortable. So I’m going to ask you to remember that. Now, I’ve shared my leadership journey with you, and I hope it would be of some use to you, but I want you to remember the early choices in life. The earlier you make the important choices in your life, the quicker you will see your path in achieving your purpose.
Before I forget, do you remember that first statement I said about “be clear in your purpose but flexible in your path in how you achieve it?” Remember that one. I’m going to share something with you. I took this off the wall today because I thought about you and how I’m just not telling you something that I read in a book. What I have here is my Boy Scout belt. Not much has changed besides my waistline. What’s on this belt are what you call skill awards. These are the things that I had an affinity towards that I want to be better at, and there are certain tasks that I had to do in order to achieve this skill award. The first skill award on my belt is the environment. The second one is first aid. The third one is community. You see where I’m going with this, right? Little did I know, the early choices I made in life about being a Boy Scout and having a relationship facilitated with the natural world was my path to how I was going to be achieving my purpose. I will be realizing 30 years of government service tomorrow. And I’ve come to realize I stayed true to achieving my purpose because, folks, what I realize now is that I did not have to be in the white coat of a doctor to help people. I can be that same person to help people in a National Park Service green coat. I want to say thank you, Godspeed to your future. Thank you graduates. Godspeed to you. Thank you for our future.