Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Less than an hour before the Wright State’s Department of Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures virtual graduation on Saturday, students in the class received a special surprise.
Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks paid a personal tribute to Wright State University’s class of 2020, calling the graduates “the chosen ones” as they make their way through the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.
A message for Wright State graduates from Tom Hanks:
“You are the chosen ones because of a fate unimagined when you began your Wright State adventures,” Hanks said. “You started in the olden times, in a world back before the Great Pandemic of 2020. You will talk of those earlier years in your lives in just that way.
You’ve gone from student to graduate with more that is expected of you than to just be an American,” he said. “You’ve had to be responsible Americans. You’ve had to be good Americans — good Americans that have made sacrifices that have saved lives.
You will have made it through the time of great sacrifice and great need,” he said. “And no one will be more fresh to the task of restarting our measure of normalcy than you — you chosen ones.”
