Kilar shared for the first time publicly that his father took his own life just three days after Kilar's own graduation from UNC in 1993 — at age 47, while Kilar was in Los Angeles trying to break into Hollywood. In the devastating aftermath, he was fired from his first job and ended up living out of his Subaru in a parking deck. He told the graduates that the mountain peaks of life may get the headlines and Facebook posts, but it is the journey through the valleys that truly defines a person.