Greeting from Board President, Thomas Costello, Jr.
I am pleased and honored to return as President of the Generation of Promise Program. The presence of our Program in the Detroit metropolitan community has grown under the leadership of our past Presidents, Mary Healy Zaleski and Marcia Wilkinson. The Promise Program was selected as the community relation's initiative of Super Bowl XL and its contribution to our community was highlighted during the celebration of Rosa Parks' life during the weeks surrounding Mrs. Parks' funeral in Detroit.
Recently, Fr. Dave Mastrangelo, S.J., President of Loyola High School, sent me the remarks of noted filmmaker, Ken Burns, during Mr. Burns' 2006 commencement address at Georgetown University. The basis of his remarks is the core of our Mission statement. Mr. Burns discussed the state of our country post-September 11 and how a fear developed that outside forces would some day bring our country to its knees. In fact, he points out, it is our own internal forces that are our worst enemies. As we know, Mr. Burns is noted for his series on the Civil War. In his remarks, he quotes the writer, Shelby Foote, “Our first Civil War started because we failed to do what we Americans do best: compromise. We like to think of ourselves as uncompromising people, but our genius is for compromise and when that broke down, we started killing each other. The lesson for us today, is tolerance and the mitigating wisdom that sees beyond the dialectical preoccupation that has set each individual, each group, each region of the country, against the whole.”
I am asking the Class XVI of The Promise Program to compromise and be tolerant of those in your community, the world, that are male or female, black or white or yellow or brown, old or young, straight or gay, Christian or Jew or Muslim. Mr. Burns said it well when he stated, “This is a human problem. An American problem. Not a red or a blue state problem. Our problem. Your problem.”
