"People with backgrounds like yours and mine can and will make a difference in this country and this world," journalist Tim Russert told University of Oklahoma graduates at the 2002 commencement ceremony.

The 58-year-old moderator of the political news show "Meet the Press" died Friday from a heart attack. Russert hosted "Meet the Press" for 17 years. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world this year.

Before he received that honor from Time, he gave the keynote address in May 2002 at OU's commencement ceremony. He told students that the values they learned at OU prepared them to compete with anybody, anywhere.

"Reject the conventional wisdom that success is only for the rich or the privileged or the Ivy League-educated," he told the graduates. "Don't believe it. I didn't. Because people with real values have a way of helping, teaching and connecting with one another."

OU President David Boren, who brought Russert to campus in 2002, knew Russert personally and said he will miss him very much.

"The entire nation will miss him because of his hard work to get the facts needed to educate the American people," Boren wrote in an e-mail Monday. "He was always motivated by a deep love of our country and an abiding confidence in the common sense of the average American."

The outpouring of praise for Russert in the days since he died would surely have embarrassed the son of a truck driver from Buffalo, N.Y., said Ken Fischer, visiting assistant professor at OU's Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

"He never made it about him and I think he would be sort of embarrassed by all this attention," Fischer said.

Russert was an excellent journalist who handled questions well, Fischer said. He said that's something he always has to teach his students about.

"They get bogged down in that list of questions," he said.

Russert always seemed prepared, but he didn't just stick to his prearranged questions.

"He actually was listening to what the people were saying, and he actually listened to their responses," Fischer said.

Julianna Parker 366-3541 jparker@normantranscript.com