Former U.S. Ambassador to India (1997-2001) Richard Celeste, who visited Woodstock for two days, accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline Lundquist, was the guest speaker at the high school assembly on Nov. 1, 2006. He shared a few of his own life stories to illustrate two main points: 1) Be open to serendipities, that is, unexpected opportunities in your lives, and 2) in service to others, nurture "the gift of new eyes."

Amb. Celeste, now the president of Colorado College in Colorado Springs, said he would try not to repeat anything he'd said the day before in Ms. Shonila Chander's class and would try not to bore the audience. As a child, he was quite close to his grandmother, who lived to be 98 ½ years old. He would ride his bicycle to his grandparents' house and visit them often. His grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a party that lasted late into the night. Richard and his brother and sister were sent home before the party ended, so the next day, he rode over to their house and asked his grandmother what he and his siblings had missed. She said they hadn't missed anything important, that after everyone had left, she and her husband had sat out on their porch swing quietly, just swinging back and forth. She had been thinking about all the wonderful times they'd had together and said to Richard's grandfather (who was hard of hearing), "You know, Ted, I'm real proud of you!" He turned to her and said, "Well, Bessie, I'm real tired of you, too!" Amb. Celeste said, "I'm proud of you students and don't want you to get tired of me."

Amb. Celeste said a Woodstock student had asked him, "How do you become a diplomat?" His answer: "Serendipity, good luck, being at the right place at the right time, making a connection that's unexpected." As a college student, Richard Celeste was more interested in what was happening outside his classrooms than inside. As an active member of Yale University's Methodist Student Organization, he was asked during his senior year, when he was 21, to go to Washington, D.C., to testify on behalf of this student organization. At a committee hearing, Celeste testified in opposition to compulsory military service. At that time, he thought no one had paid attention to him, and the law under consideration was not changed. As he left the hearing, a woman stopped him and told him she was surprised that he, a Yale student, held those views. She thought that her son, Sam, also a Yale student, would be happy to know someone with similar opinions and asked Richard to look him up. Richard and Sam and Sam's sister, Sally, became friends during the next year, when Richard stayed on at the university to teach for a year.

Amb. Celeste then went to England to study at Oxford University for two years. He married, and he and his wife were expecting their first child when he received a phone call from Sally. She asked Richard to come to Washington, D.C., to work on a new program started by President John F. Kennedy-the Peace Corps. This was indeed an unexpected request, but Richard and his wife accepted. Richard thought he would work for awhile in Washington and then return to England to complete his degree at Oxford. After a short time in Washington, Sam and Sally's father, Chester Bowles, who had been appointed ambassador to India, asked Richard to go with him to Delhi to work as his staff assistant.

Amb. Celeste said, "Here I was, 25 years old; I knew nothing about India, as I'd studied Africa. This was not part of my plan. We considered the offer for 20 or so hours, thinking, 'When will we have a chance like this again?'" In 1963, right after their son was born, the Celestes went to Delhi, Richard worked for Ambassador Bowles, they stayed for four years, and they had two more children.

"All of this happened because I was in Washington one day testifying, and a woman asked me to meet her son-serendipity. Every single one of you in your lives will have moments when someone offers you an opportunity. If this is an unexpected opportunity, it could open up a whole new future to you. If I had not said 'yes,' I would never have known India, my second home."

Years later, in 1979, Celeste ran for governor of Ohio and was defeated. [In a later election, Celeste won and served as governor of Ohio from 1982 to 1990.] Unexpectedly, a representative of President Jimmy Carter asked him to be Peace Corps director, and Richard accepted. He visited 27 countries over two years. One of his first trips was to Senegal in West Africa.

"I visited Peace Corps volunteer Helen D'Robier, who had graduated from Boston College. She was working in rural Senegal on the edge of the Sahara Desert." Her project was to oversee a Women's Cooperative, helping them create a garden to grow nutritious vegetables for the village. She had been there for 18 months. We had lunch with the women of the Cooperative and visited their garden. They had used a dried riverbed, their first vegetables were growing, and they were excited about selling the vegetables. The women loved Helen, and she loved them. I asked Helen, 'How did the women feel about having a blind PC volunteer?' (Helen was legally blind; she could only read very large letters if she held the paper close to her face.)"

Helen said, "They don't know I'm blind." And I asked, "How can they not know?" Helen responded, "I'm tutoring two children, teaching them to read. When they read, they hold the pages close to their faces, too!"

Amb. Celeste said he asked Helen what her experiences in the village meant to her, and she said, "It has given me the gift of new eyes. If I'd stayed in Boston, I'd never have understood what life is like for village women in West Africa. I know what I love about my country and what I want to change about it. And I've learned how to see myself." She said that if she had known ahead of time what her work as a Peace Corps volunteer would have entailed, she would have thought she could not do it and refused to go. But now, she told Richard, "I see myself in a different way." Celeste said, "Helen was given a gift of new eyes-to see the women, herself, and her country in new ways."

"One of the puzzling things about service," said Amb. Celeste, "is the more you give, the more you receive in return. This is how we change the world. This is how we grow, by service."

After the assembly, I chatted with Jill Koop-Liechty and Allison Weber and thanked them for their excellent meditation prior to Amb Celeste's talk. Mrs. Koop-Liechty said she wished someone had asked Amb. Celeste whether he thought God has anything to do with serendipities in our lives. When I walked into the Development/Alumni Office, who do you suppose was sitting at Jane Cummings' computer, checking his e-mail?

"Hello, Amb. Celeste," I said, "I really enjoyed your presentation. Tell me, do you think God has anything to do with serendipities?" He answered readily, "Oh, yes, it's the Holy Spirit."

-Kathleen Hamman, writer, Development Department