Trace Adkins Delivers NC Graduation Speech After Students Request

Piedmont High School seniors welcomed a very special guest on Monday to their 50th graduation ceremony in Concord, N.C.

Grammy-Award winning country music star Trace Adkins gave a 20-minute commencement speech in front of the 220 graduates thanks to two of their classmates.

Seniors Jackson Hargett and Ashlee Price are responsible for getting Adkins to come to their school. The two seniors together wrote Adkins a letter requesting that he be the commencement speaker at their graduation ceremony.

Price said that she wanted someone special and they both liked the fact that he grew up in a small town, much like themselves.

“He’s just a good guy and we wanted someone the students would like, their parents would like and we felt like we could relate to him because he came from the same kind of area,” Price said.

SLIDESHOW:Trace Adkins Addresses Students At Graduation

VIDEO:Trace: Be passionate, have integrity and lead yourself to success.

The letter was passed around from Adkins’ team, band members and finally to the singer himself. "It was really cool the way it finally got to me. Greg, my bass player, came up on the bus and handed me a letter from this high school, and I had never been asked to do that before,” he said.

Much to the students and faculty’s surprise, Adkins accepted the invitation and was in North Carolina on Monday to deliver the commencement speech.

Adkins met with Hargett, Price and school officials before the ceremony so they could thank him for coming.

Adkins spoke at the ceremony about what to expect of life after graduation and he didn’t sugar-coat anything either.

His best advice to the seniors, “Live with you parents as long as you can. Just mooch off the old man for as long as you possibly can, because once you leave mama's house, it's all over now.“

Adkins also told them, “Be passionate, have integrity and lead yourself to success.”

June 14 was a very special day for Piedmont High School and one that 220 seniors will never forget.