It wasn’t exactly a graduation speech, but the advice Kansas City Chiefs All Pro defensive back Eric Berry gave to a commencement-sized crowd of nearly 1,300 at the annual Times Free Press Best of Preps banquet Thursday night was equally as inspirational.
The former University of Tennessee star said some of his words came directly from what he’d heard growing up from his father, James Berry, likewise a former Vol.
“Know thyself,” said the younger Berry, who was the National Football League’s Comeback Player of the Year for the 2015 season, “and be true to that. Everybody else [you might want to be] is taken. If I can be myself, no one else can be better at being me than me.”
The Atlanta native says he didn’t so much take the little things for granted during his nine months of recovery from Hodgkin’s lymphoma in early 2015 as he did learn to appreciate them more.
Things as mundane as getting out of bed and going “outside and feel[ing] the sun on your skin,” Berry said, and “experiencing the unconditional love from your family.”