Thank you, Tom, for that introduction and for the invitation to be here on this wonderful occasion. It’s an honor to join you in celebrating the Class of 2026 Bruins and all those who helped to bring these young men to this moment.
Before I share a few reflections, I would be remiss not to mention that next year will mark Tom’s last at Brunswick after nearly four decades. Today belongs to the graduates before me. But I must say that when this institution looks back on its history, it will record these years as some of Brunswick’s best.
Several years ago, I sat where you are all sitting for Brunswick’s annual dinner. My son was a first-grade student here at the time, which means that you gentlemen would have been in the third grade. And that evening, Tom gave a talk so memorable that I saved a hard copy and am referencing it today—it was truly extraordinary. He spoke to parents about how to prepare their sons for life without overprotecting them from it, even—and most especially—within the safe confines of a community such as this one.
Gentlemen, I would like to continue that conversation today, this time with you.
Reflecting on the responsibility to form young men of resilience and character, Tom wondered if, quote, “the very absence of experience with obstacles may just prove to be the greatest obstacle our boys will ever face.” He asked, amid the bounty of places like Brunswick and Greenwich, “how we [can] instill the strength of character that often only comes as a result of experience with great struggle.”
Now, this is not to suggest that the Class of 2026 has been spared from struggle. After all, you were born at the height of the global financial crisis and then came of age during Covid. And that is to say nothing of the personal challenges that each of you have surely faced, in your own way, to today’s ceremony.
But Tom’s worry, I think, was of a different kind: that an institution like Brunswick, in the very fullness of its distinction, falls short of its highest obligation if it deviates from the design of its founding—that is, if it produces young men who are more inclined to avoid failure than to pursue greatness.
Tom, if you recall, you made this point by referencing an aphorism with which our graduates are no doubt familiar: that ships are safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.
History attributes a similar adage to Teddy Roosevelt, a man who understood the hazard of vessels left to rust in their idleness from his service as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. To paraphrase him, warships are not built to rot in harbor.
But President Roosevelt’s commentary found its fullest expression in April of 1899, when he stood before Chicago’s Hamilton Club—named, I might add, after Treasury’s first and most iconic secretary—to extol the virtues of what he called “the strenuous life.”
If a willingness to risk comfort in pursuit of something greater was the ultimate test of American character, then the Brunswick School would prepare young men to pass it.
Brunswick, from its first day in 1902, was a response to President Roosevelt’s call.
And now, one-and-a-quarter centuries later, so are each of you.
I should add that Roosevelt did not seek to romanticize hardship. But he also understood that in the crucible of life’s more unsparing dimensions emerge the virtues that make a man of value. That great struggle can have good purpose.
I think, for example, of our nation’s founding. Of course, we assemble this afternoon on the eve of America’s 250th anniversary. But after our founders declared independence, they still had to win it. And by the winter of 1776, the cause of American liberty appeared perilously close to collapse.
The sense of possibility that the Battles of Lexington and Concord had sparked a year earlier descended into despair as the Continental Army sustained a series of defeats. Confidence in a burgeoning revolution eroded with every British advance. George Washington himself even wrote to his brother, Samuel, to say “I think the game is pretty near up.”
And yet, just one week later, sustained by a faith that his circumstances did little to justify, Washington embarked on what would become one of the most consequential acts of courage in American history. On Christmas night, as a roaring nor’easter coated the banks of the Delaware River in ice—and pelted those who dare cross it with sleet that froze as it fell—he loaded 2,400 of his troops into boats, bound for the Battle of Trenton.
Aboard those boats, Washington’s soldiers lay frigid in body and battered in spirit. But their resolve was stirred anew by the recitation of Thomas Paine’s appeal that “these are the times that try men’s souls.” The Battle of Trenton lasted no more than an hour. The Continental Army landed a blow so decisive against the British that it turned the tide of the war. Washington’s great wager reignited the cause of revolution. And America as we know it today might not exist had he, his men, and his boats chosen the safety of the harbor that night.
Of course, two and a half centuries later, the stakes aren’t quite as high as the formation of a new nation. But surmounting “a mere life of ease,” as Roosevelt encouraged, remains a central challenge of every institution that takes seriously the formation of young people, including this one.
Much has been said about the condition of young men in America today, and the ways in which their instincts and ambitions should require restraint—and in some quarters, apology.
Too often, we have been left to wonder whether our culture aims to raise a generation oriented toward or away from the rigors of its responsibility, among them, as Roosevelt described, the gladness to “do a man’s work, to dare and endure and to labor.”
Now, after years in which it seemed fashionable to repress these virtues, American life under President Trump’s leadership is rediscovering their enduring value anew.
Brunswick, of course, has never wavered from the merits of “wrest[ing] triumph from toil and risk.” Since 1902, it has prepared a long procession of men who have worked and lived in accordance with President Roosevelt’s most exacting standard for the strenuous life. Its sons have ventured to the farthest reaches of the globe—rather than remain within the safety of the familiar—to eradicate diseases, alleviate suffering, and expand human knowledge.
That tradition—indeed that expectation—now belongs to the Class of 2026. More than your inheritance as Brunswick alumni, it becomes your obligation.
Because the measure of this institution is ultimately not revealed in the rankings it attains, nor the campuses to which it sends its graduates. It is not even in the many honors it accumulates beneath the banner of its name. The true measure of a Brunswick education is revealed in the distance between the life that will be within your reach and the life that you will choose to live.
I understand the tension between comfort and consequence personally, because every defining chapter of my own life has hinged on a willingness to take smart risks. Before President Trump nominated me to serve as Treasury Secretary, I had passport stamps from approximately sixty-eight countries, only to return and settle not far from where I grew up in South Carolina. Returning to a place where I was a tenth-generation native was especially sweet because I had circled the globe many times and still wanted to come home. We have a saying in Charleston that I’m sure many of you in the audience believe applies to Greenwich—“Why would I leave when I’ve arrived?”
I had decided to come home, hone my golf game, work on my book, hand off my business to the next generation, and spend an uninterrupted month at my house in the Bahamas.
But then I became concerned about the future of our Republic and got involved in candidate Trump’s campaign. In November 2024, the call for public service came from the President-elect to serve as the seventy-ninth U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. In the past ten days, I’ve met with the Prime Minister of Japan, the President of Korea, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and President Macron of France—all in their home countries.
Nothing else in my life has ever matched this whirlwind, but the privilege of shaping the trajectory of the United States for my children and you all the next 250 years is purposeful, consequential, and all-consuming.
Now, as you leave this place, you will be tested to take the easy or the most convenient way. As you do so, I hope you will remember that the world does not need more men of “timid peace.” I trust, instead, you will recognize that it requires men of consequence; that it requires men of Brunswick. Men who believe, as Washington did on the coldest night of that darkest winter, that something worthy awaits beyond the comfort of the shore—if only we have the courage, honor, and truth to go out and seize it.
Congratulations, Class of 2026, and fair winds on the voyage ahead. Thank you.
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