Singer and commencement speaker Roberta Flack tells graduates to envision the future they desire, even in daunting times.

01:00 AM EDT on Monday, May 26, 2003

BY MICHAEL P. McKINNEY
Journal Staff Writer

DARTMOUTH --
He's been away four months, somewhere in the Kuwaiti desert. So when Laura Baganha picked up the blue University of Massachusetts Dartmouth diploma for her husband yesterday, it brought Paulo a little closer.

"It's very bittersweet," said Laura Baganha, 25, of Somerset. "Everything here today is for him -- and he is the only one not here."

Her husband couldn't make it to the university's 103rd commencement, where he was awarded a civil engineering degree. He is busy doing civil engineering work. But she and family plan to send him a letter of sorts, recorded on a DVD, that he can play on a laptop computer.

Like the Baganhas, for many of the UMass graduates, the real world is already a familiar place. And Roberta Flack, the hit singer and commencement speaker who was awarded an honorary doctorate of music yesterday, talked about the "real world" for the hundreds who received bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in the university's outdoor Vietnam Veterans Peace Memorial amphitheater.

Flack, whose best-known hit is "Killing Me Softly," advised graduates to dare to dream, to have a personal direction, and to know themselves. By doing those things, she said, the tough times, the difficult job market, won't deter them.

Flack told the UMass graduates that even though she had studied piano, society made it difficult for a black woman in the 1950s to be a concert pianist. And so, in another life, Flack taught music and English.

Then jazz musician Les McCann discovered her and she got a record deal. Then came the call from actor Clint Eastwood. Flack mimicked his raspy Dirty Harry voice for the graduates, telling Flack he liked her version of the song "The First Time Ever I saw Your Face." It ended up in Eastwood's film Play Misty for Me in 1971. And Roberta Flack, as we know her, was born.

Keeping focused and knowing herself made all the difference. "It was all part of the plan. And I kept my eyes on the prize," she said. " Don't let the daunting times around you distract you from your dreams."

Consider Rose Larrivee. She works eight-hour days at Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River. She has a husband, Eric, and children. She walked out of the university yesterday with a master's in nursing.

'I feel I don't know what I'm going to do with my free time," Rose Larivee joked.

For some graduates, such as Justin Desmeale, 23, of Wrentham, Mass., college itself became "stressful and overwhelming toward the end of the year," as he put it. Flack's message, he said, resonated. "Just keep going up from here," he said.

A marketing major, Desmeale said he did not know yet about a career, but would like to work in Massachusetts.

"It's the real world," added his father, Richard.

To contact Mike McKinney, phone 508-674-8401 or e-mail mmckinne@projo.com

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