She was the first African American woman to hold the post of secretary of state. She was also the first woman in the role of National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush. According to the citation conferring the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Public Service to Rice, when President Bush introduced her to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the president said, “she is the person who tells me everything I know about the Soviet Union.”

What, however, made the audience at the William & Mary Hall to applaud Rice repeatedly and give her standing ovation were her inspiring words to the graduating students.

The address she gave was so memorable because she was willing to share openly and honestly her unique American experience. She talked about her journey in life that took her from having been born as the granddaughter of a sharecropper in Alabama, who saved up cotton to pay for his first year of education at Stillman College, to having become the 66th secretary of state of the United States.

Rice empathized she always believed that education is transformative. “It literally changes lives” she said. “That is why people over centuries have worked hard to become educated. Education, more than any other force, can help to erase the arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlock every person’s God-given potential.”

Indeed, at age 16 she graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of Denver. There, her professor, Josef Korbel, a former Czechoslovak diplomat, an exile from his native land, took Rice under his wings and became her mentor.

Although Rice’s original ambition was to become a concert pianist, she started piano lessons at age 3, and at 15 performed with the Denver Symphony, she changed her career path. Inspired by Korbel, a consummate diplomat, Rice became an expert on the Soviet Union and international relations. As her Doctoral citation states, “The first African American woman to hold the post of Secretary of State, you implemented a strategy of ‘Transformational Diplomacy,’ an effort with America’s partners around the globe to build and sustain democratic, well-governed states.”

A twist of fate permitted me to witness Josef Korbel in action, using diplomacy as a “transformational” instrument. After World War II, before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, while serving as his county’s ambassador to Marshall Tito’s Yugoslavia, and a diplomatic troubleshooter for his government, Korbel, was the personification of qualities that made Rice, and Korbel’s daughter Madeleine Albright, who became the first female U.S. secretary of state, models for generations of “creative” diplomats.

At one point, I served as Korbel’s interpreter in Prague with Hungarian statesman Michael Karolyi. I have never forgotten his passion for serving the goals of freedom and justice.

Just as Rice asked the 2015 Class graduating from William & Mary, “To be passionate in what they do, cultivate humility, remain optimistic and always serve others and the goals of freedom and justice.”

Frank Shatz, lives in Williamsburg, Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from the Virginia Gazette. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his selected column.