Be excellent in everything you do. Challenge the system in appropriate ways. Find commonalities in others different from yourself. Never take for granted what a place like Christ School instills in you. Relationships made here will change the course of your life, so value them after graduation.
We could go on.
Elton Wright ’73 spoke from experience as our first African American graduate and a true Greenie on Monday. He bestowed an hour’s worth of wisdom during an all-school keynote conversation in Pingree Auditorium, part of our annual celebration of Martin Luther King Day.
Jackson Cancel ’26, Jayden Daniels ’25, and Dr. Spenser Simrill moderated the talk, and Elton received a well-deserved standing ovation from the students and faculty at its conclusion.
Elton did not sugarcoat any details of his experience here, later at Wake Forest University, or the general social climate in early 1970s – it was a time of integration and therefore unrest at many schools throughout the Southeast U.S. He called the greatest blessing from his time as a student here – “stick-to-itiveness.”
“I came here with a serious chip on my shoulder,” Elton said.
“I came for academics. Coming to Christ School changed my life. I tell my children every day, it changed their lives. The quality of education here, there was nothing that was going to take me off point for that mission. So, I did what I had to do and suffered what I had to suffer. Was it easy? No. But if someone said, ‘Hey, you can rewrite all of it?’ Probably wouldn’t change a word, period, a sentence, nothing.”
Elton is currently President of Roland Agency, Inc., an independent insurance agency that specializes in Medicare and life insurance solutions. He and his wife, Renee, live in the Raleigh area. His background includes a senior management position at Wal-Mart that was responsible for supplying Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.
“Stick-to-itiveness, organization, just being calm in the moment," Elton said of his temperament at the time.
"Because there are plenty of times where I would like to ball up my fist and fight. No, no, no. It doesn’t do any good. You have to engage here and here (pointing to his head and heart). Change is imperceptible at times. Look at the things that have changed in my life? The world continues to evolve, morph, and move forward. And I just think that this incubator (Christ School), the privilege to be here, is what in my mind stands out as one of those things that really helped formulate me as a man and a human moving forward. And none of it was easy. None of it was easy.”