Benjamin Alumni Greg Norman Jr 04’, son of Australian entrepreneur Greg Norman, has come to the upper school to receive the Distinguished Alumni award for his success. 

Greg Norman Jr started a water sports complex in West Palm called Shark Wake Park where people can have fun on water cables or enjoy the aqua park.

Norman Jr talked about how his education at Benjamin led to the success of his career. 

In his speech, he began by saying “I don’t feel like I am in the same category as those military heros, doctors, athletes, it’s incredible”.

Head of the School Mr. Faus gave a speech to introduce Greg  Norman Jr. As the alumni award is not new to  Mr. Faus from his previous school, he felt warm hearted about the new  inductee.

He said,   “I thought Mr. Norman was really authentic  and spoke from the heart. The two things that I took away from it was one: follow your passions and don’t be deterred if you’re going down a unique path and two: he contributed his time 14 years at Benjamin to give him some skills that enabled him to be a good decision maker and to be successful” . 

Faus believes that an outstanding alumni is someone who takes the opportunities they were  given and goes out to do good things with those skills whether it be St. Pauls or Benjamin or anywhere. 

Mr. Faus also had the opportunity after the assembly to have lunch with the Norman family and the alumni council at North Palm Beach Country Club.

Mr. Norman said, “failure is a gigantic part of the process, you will fail a lot”. 

One thing he based his success he said off of is to “surround yourself with people who are going to build you up and not drag you down”. 

When asked when he was younger by faculty Toby Harbeck what he wanted to do, he replied that he wanted to be a wakeboarder. 

Norman said, “I didn’t know what that meant at the time, I was just following my passions, I didn’t know it was going to lead me down a path of building shark wake park”. 

Concluding his reception of the award, he said, “it’s a pretty good feeling, not to be recognized by your peers in any way shape or form but to be validated that you are on a right path”.