Bill Clinton gives inspiring speech at DePauw

On Friday, Nov. 18, Bill Clinton visited Greencastle and presented a speech to DePauw University students and residents, putting the audience on the edge of their seats.

Clinton is a master of public speaking, and it is no wonder he holds such an impressive track record in politics.  Who wouldn't jump on seeing the one democrat to cut government programs and balance a budget? That is a rarity I couldn't pass up.

Bill Clinton used this speech to inspire the nation's future with philanthropy and instill the nation with environmental responsibility. His positive message was inspiring and informative, mentioning personal experience and recent research concerning the environment. He also used just a dash of personal humor, occasionally making the crowd chuckle.

Clinton spoke of how water purification was a huge problem for the poor in this country and around the world, killing an astronomical amount of children each year.

He gave every citizen a reason to go out and help the community and environment: no matter how small the help, help is still help.   One resonating quote from Clinton was "The problems of the world today are real and profound, but this is a pretty great time to be alive."

He then talked about health concerns and told many heart-warming personal stories of his travels as a philanthropist, speaking of his charity to aid the less fortunate.

Further, he touched on health research and the ability to find pre-determined health risks in people using advancements in genome research, as well as the new results that seem to show how evolution started.

However he did not forget to mention that all of this research still must be tested and retested again to prove its validity.

Clinton was a phenomenal choice for the 25th anniversary of the DePauw lecture series. It was well worth my drive to share my time with hundreds of others who waited in line for hours and crowded that auditorium that day.

I still, to this day, remember the Bill Clinton accent my father would don to aggravate me as a child, and how, at that age, I disliked our president, (for what reason I could not tell you).

But that Friday, one of the most memorable I have lived through to date, gave me nothing but respect for our former president and excitement for the years to come.