Best speakers are rich in wisdom.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

Awoman representing a local junior high e-mailed me a few months back. "I am looking for a spectacular guest speaker for graduation," she wrote. "Someone the kids will relate to, someone that we could only get if we dreamed big and reached for the stars."

Aw, shucks, I thought, before reading that the school's No. 1 choice was actor Arnold Schwarzenegger but he was unavailable.

But being No. 2, I quickly reasoned, is still honorable, given the big-name competition. Then I realized the school's second choice was Terri Irwin, the ex-Eugene woman who tracks crocodiles with her husband, Steve, on TV's Animal Planet channel.

"Someone said you had recently done an interview with Terri," the school rep wrote. "Do you know how I can get in touch with her?"

When it comes to commencement speeches, why the obsession with the famous? Not that I'm bitter, of course - I was busy that night anyway ... probably - but why do we think that an actor so buff he could lift a minivan is necessarily going to say something significant?

"I'll be back!" seems a tad shallow, even if said over and over - and with great conviction.

Now Irwin, she's a hometown girl who's turned that croc-stalking stuff into fame and fortune. And having read some stories about her - actually, it was Register-Guard reporter Bob Keefer, not I, who interviewed her ... though I once worked with Bob! - I'm sure she'd do an admirable job inspiring people. (`Life can be like a monster croc ...")

But some schools go after only a name. A title. A politician. An actor. Some deep thinker like Drew Carey, a Kent State dropout who told Cleveland State graduates in 2000 that he got drunk and overslept on the last day students could drop courses without penalty - and, thus, got D's and F's. (Cleveland State officials' reaction to his 2000 speech? They awarded him an honorary degree.)

Only a few schools have the guts to go for substance over style. The Class of 1971 at my alma mater, Corvallis High School, chose its favorite bus driver, Bob Skelton.

CBS News covered it. Walter Cronkite reported it. "Bob the Bus Driver" - my bus driver - delivered one of the most noteworthy grad speeches in America.

At 56, the grandfather of five talked about closing the generation gap. About the people's right to protest. And about parents and kids getting along.

It wasn't that he said anything particularly new, it's that he'd driven just about every kid in Corvallis somewhere in the past 12 years, knew the exact number of turns between Mountain House and Hoodoo, and always made you feel like the most important kid alive.

In other words: It wasn't so much what he said, but who he was - the way he treated people.

Instead of the rich and famous, more schools should choose the humble and wise - the Bob Skeltons of the world. The problem with the rich and famous is they no longer live in the worlds of the people they're supposed to inspire. They're like the rock star who starts out singing about poverty and loneliness and now travels, along with an entourage, in a $1 million motor home that nobody can see into.

We need grass-roots graduation speakers. Real people. Like the Kirkland, Wash., minister I once heard tell students about growing up black in Alabama - and overcoming the hatred he felt for whites.

Like the Lane County Drug Court alum I heard speak at the graduation ceremony for ex-addicts in the same program - a man who finally got better because he dared to face himself.

Like Ron Heagy, a guy from Tangent who broke his neck the day before his 18th birthday in a surfing accident, earned a master's degree by typing with a stick in his teeth and is now an author, painter and motivational speaker. A guy who recently opened Camp Attitude - "where all disabilities rock and roll." And a guy who will speak June 10 at the Pleasant Hill Junior High graduation.

Seems the school that dreamed big and reached for the stars got its "spectacular guest speaker" after all.