In a corner of his study, Tom Vilsack ’68 maintains an homage of sorts to his Pittsburgh roots, displaying memorabilia from local sports teams. Nestled amongst the tributes to professional athletes is his Shady Side Academy varsity letter, earned for playing on the football team. 

One might think Vilsack keeps his letter on display to remember the glory days of playing exceptional high school football, but the opposite is true. “I was not very coordinated. I wasn’t as strong as I needed to be. I didn’t quite understand, intellectually, the nature of the game,” he says. Despite his shortcomings, Vilsack continued to try. “That letter is part of the personal things I kept because it represents sticking it out, not giving up,” he shares.

Sticking it out in the face of hardship is something that Vilsack had to do quite regularly in his young life. He credits his academic, athletic, and social experiences at Shady Side with giving him the confidence to persevere in the face of failure and the critical thinking skills that precipitated his future leadership strengths.

Vilsack came to Shady Side’s Senior School in 1964. “Freshman year was very hard,” he recalls. “And the first semester of sophomore year was a disaster, to the point where I didn’t think I could cut it.” In addition to facing the academic rigors of his new school, Vilsack was impacted by turmoil in his personal life. His mom struggled with alcohol and prescription drug addiction throughout his middle school and freshman years of school, leading his parents to separate for a time. After his mom made the decision, with support from her family and friends, to get sober, she moved back in with the family. Vilsack then regained faith in his ability to succeed, in large part due to the support he had from caring teachers at Shady Side. 

He recalls admitting to French Teacher John Cousins that he feared he couldn’t handle being a student at Shady Side, but Cousins encouraged him to persist. “Mr. Cousins’ faith in me to stick it out, and watching my mom go from the lowest place you can be in life to turning it around, taught me that you don’t quit on things that matter,” Vilsack says. “It was a tough year and a half, but the struggle was worth it.” 
Vilsack would go on to have great successes in politics after graduating from Shady Side — he was the mayor of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, an Iowa state senator, governor of Iowa, and a two-time United States Secretary of Agriculture — but his first foray in politics came during student council elections his senior year at Shady Side. Vilsack ran for president of the student council. He lost. “Not only did I run and lose,” he says, “but I ran against and lost to my best friend.” 

Reflecting back, Vilsack understands why Douglas Campbell ’68 triumphed. Campbell had been a boarder since his sophomore year, while Vilsack only began boarding in his senior year, so Campbell earned the boarders’ votes. 
Campbell also had a campaign issue: he said he would fix the water fountains. “Which he never did, I would like to point out,” Vilsack says with a chuckle. “I didn’t understand politics at the time. Having gone through the experiences I’ve gone through with politics, if I could take myself back in time with that knowledge, I’m sure I would beat him.” 

Campbell made Vilsack his vice president. He and his fellow council members worked hard to impact their school community. One of their main achievements was rewriting the council’s constitution. The 1968 issue of “The Acadamian” noted, “This year’s Council, perhaps more than any other in the past, through its genuine interest in the students and their problems, should be considered as one of the school’s most productive.”

Failure is okay. You may not think that while you’re experiencing it, but you learn the most about yourself through your failures. That’s when you can reflect back on what you could have done differently, and that prepares you for the success of the future.

Vilsack’s experiences at Shady Side and the lessons learned in his first campaign loss were instrumental during Vilsack’s run for governor in Iowa, a state that had not elected a Democratic governor in the more than 30 years prior to Vilsack’s win. Importantly, he had a campaign issue that he strongly believed in. 

Vilsack talked on the campaign trail about making Iowa the food capital of the world by focusing on agriculture-related economic opportunities in rural areas and small towns. Despite recommendations from his campaign team to stop talking about that point and stick to the script of traditional talking points they knew would resonate with voters, Vilsack persisted. “I said, ‘I really believe in this idea of creating new products out of what we grow and raise, creating more markets for farmers, and improving Iowa income. I’m excited about this. I’m passionate about it,’” he recalls.

With three weeks left to go in the race, Vilsack sat 23 points behind his competitor. “When you’re that far behind, it’s pretty easy to give up,” he admits. “But between my mom’s experience and my Shady Side ‘you can’t-give-up’ experience, I stuck it out.” The result? Vilsack won.
While running for governor of Iowa, Vilsack spoke knowledgeably about his passion for food and agricultural opportunities because he had put in the work to learn the details, analyze them, and develop his position. The ability to research and scrutinize facts and opinions, then clearly communicate about them, stems directly from moments of failure and learning he experienced while at Shady Side.

Vilsack recalls that during an admissions interview at Amherst College in 1967, the interviewer asked Vilsack what he thought of the Vietnam War. Vilsack confidently said he supported the war. Then the interviewer asked a simple yet complicated question: “Why?”

“I immediately felt the heat of embarrassment rise in my face,” Vilsack says, because he knew he couldn’t back up his position with any substantial facts and analysis. “But I also thought to myself, ‘I really should know the answer to that question.’”

When he returned to Shady Side, Vilsack went to History Teacher Robert Foglia and said, “Mr. Foglia, I don’t know anything about this. Can you help me understand Vietnam — why we’re there, and what we’re doing there?” Foglia responded by giving Vilsack a reading list and discussing the topic with him. Thanks to his teacher’s willingness to educate him outside of the scope of just what was on the syllabus, Vilsack became even more enamored with history and government policy. “I became very knowledgeable about the Vietnam War, and I could have answered that interviewer’s question very well if I had ever been asked it again,” Vilsack says. 

Vilsack says Shady Side was a safe space that allowed him to turn a moment of embarrassment into an opportunity to grow. The lesson that “You should have some opinions, and you should be able to articulate and explain those opinions,” Vilsack says, is likely why he became the Secretary of Agriculture under President Barack Obama.

When meeting with Obama for the first time, he asked Vilsack about his thoughts on the connection between agriculture, food, and rural areas. “So I went into my food capital spiel,” Vilsack says. Obama’s response? “He slaps his knees and says, ‘Okay, you’re my guy,’” Vilsack recalls. “He saw the enthusiasm, the excitement, the passion, and the intellect.”
Vilsack says that he would not be where he is today without his high school experience. “Shady Side gave me a quality education,” he says. “I developed my ability to think, write, and express myself orally while I was there.”

Vilsack, who is currently the CEO of The World Food Prize Foundation, believes that current students likely don’t understand just how valuable their Shady Side experiences will be to their future endeavors. “But there is a continuum,” he says. “Later, when they look back, they will see the links.”

If he can offer any advice to today’s students and alumni, it’s this: “Failure is okay. You may not think that while you’re experiencing it, but you learn the most about yourself through your failures. That’s when you can reflect back on what you could have done differently, and that prepares you for the success of the future.”

Any time Vilsack finds himself flailing or failing, he says to himself, “I can do this. I can gut through it. Because I’ve done it before. I already learned this lesson — I learned it at Shady Side.”