When Stanley Motta (BBA ’67) was asked to deliver the charge to graduates at this year’s diploma ceremony, he knew that he had a special insight into the role: Forty-five years ago, as a Tulane senior, he himself had sat in McAlister Auditorium impatiently waiting for the speaker to finish his speech so he could receive his diploma.
Stanley Motta (BBA ’67), chairman of Copa Holdings, delivered this year’s charge to graduates.
“I realize that as far as you graduates are concerned, the best speech I could give would be, ‘Congratulations. Have a good life. I am out of here,’” Motta quipped. “While it might be the best and shortest graduation speech ever given, unfortunately it’s not what I was invited to do.”
His speech may have run a little longer than 10 words, but Motta, chairman of Copa Holdings, parent company of Panama’s Copa Airlines and Colombia’s Copa Airlines Colombia, president of Inversiones Bahia, and CEO of Motta Internacional, won over his audience with a humorous, heartfelt address to graduates.
Motta began his remarks by quoting Ruben Blades, the great Panamanian singer, songwriter and actor, who wrote in one of his most famous songs, “Life will give you surprises.”
“In life, it is not a matter of whether or not you will have surprises,” Motta said, “it is only a matter of how you handle them.”
In 1999, Motta received what he thought was the worst possible surprise: His wife had been shot four times during a robbery attempt at a Miami shopping mall. She survived the attack, and a few weeks later, he invited the detective handling the case into the intensive care unit to meet her for the first time.
Motta thought nothing of the gesture, but the detective’s response made a lasting impression.
“You don’t understand what this means to me,” the detective told Motta. “I’m a homicide cop. I almost never get to meet the victims.”
“Suddenly, everything became clear,” Motta said. “No matter what amount of good or bad luck we had during those first days of my wife’s recovery, in my mind at that moment everything turned into good luck because his comment put everything into perspective.”
Another important life lesson, Motta said, he owes to “I Love Lucy.” A few years ago, while scanning the dial, Motta stumbled across a TV special celebrating the 50th anniversary of the classic sitcom. In a segment with three of the show’s original writers, an interviewer asked how they managed to come up with such funny scripts week after week.
One of the writers replied that they simply tried to think of funny situations to put Lucy in and then, once they had the situation, they’d write a story to get her there. The insight struck a chord with Motta.
“Our lives should also be written with the end in mind,” Motta said. “If you know how you want the last chapter to read, you will certainly think about each chapter along the way. Not all of the plot will be pleasant, but as long as you focus on the big picture of what you want to accomplish and work hard at it, things will work out.”
In closing, Motta encouraged graduates to keep learning and growing, to always keep the ending of the book of their lives in mind, and to try to handle life’s surprises with patience, honesty, humility, faith, confidence, and love for one’s family and friends.
He left the graduates with one last message.
“Congratulations. Have a good life. I am out of here.”
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