Sunday, May 19, 2013

By Ben Williams
Published: June 18, 2009

In the hours preceding graduation, a continuous purple and white trickle of students garbed in graduation robes flowed towards the Tabernacle in the Campground in Oak Bluffs, adjusting each other's graduation caps, sharing hugs and memories, enjoying their final moments of high school.

Members of the MVRHS graduating class of 2009 await their turn to walk across the stage at the historic Tabernacle. Photo by Susan Safford

As commencement neared, the men and women formed two lines forming a semicircle around the friends and family members seated in the Tabernacle. Junior class marshals Lonni Phillips and Christopher Davies lead the class of 2009 as the purple and white clad students merged into marching order and filed into their seats as the band played. Just enough pomp for the parents, sufficient circumstance for the students.

Master of Ceremonies Kia Minor, known for her open and outgoing manner, welcomed the class with emotion. In a teary voice, she expressed gratitude to all who had made it possible for her to be there on that day, making special note of how her guidance counselor had helped her through high school. "Alright," she then remarked, "Enough with the teary stuff."

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What followed was light-hearted. Given a podium and their peers as a captive audience, the student speakers expressed the moment in a variety of ways. Ms. Minor gave a list of 10 things she had learned in high school, sharing inside jokes that drew widespread laughter from the students and teachers, and slightly bemused smiles from those who didn't quite understand the significance of a Chvatal-sized cellphone.

Salutatorian Haley Koorse implored the class to keep their "sea legs," which she defined as the distinctive mannerisms that define an Islander. Student council president Maxwell Nunes began with a question. Having asked many students how they would measure the past four years, the unifying theme he seized upon was laughter. Noting all of the times his classmates had been asked to leave the library on account of their excessive merriment, Mr. Nunes remarked, "Laughter is the shortest distance between 203 people."

The comments to the senior class given by Superintendent Dr. James Weiss were of an extra-planetary nature. Calling upon lessons taught by "Star Trek", Dr. Weiss encouraged the graduates to boldly go where they had never gone before. His call for the graduates to "Live long and prosper" was met with at least one Vulcan hand salute, which many in the audience interpreted as a "V" for Vineyard.

Valedictorian Bethany Pennington, who was also given the Superintendent's Oustanding Student Award, centered her speech in appreciation and moved it with a metaphor of music. She described her passions, then directly asked her class, "What is your passion?" Running through modern musical jargon she asked her classmates to fix what angers them and to address what makes them cry. She gave special thanks to Jesus Christ, and implored her classmates to act upon their passions, whoever they give thanks to.

In his first year as principal of Martha's Vineyard Regional High School, Stephen Nixon congratulated and gave tribute to the class. Quoting John Donne's seminal phrase "No man is an island," and drawing upon his time as a history teacher, Mr. Nixon asked the graduates to enter their future by thinking back to their past. "Sometimes it takes more than a village to raise a child," Mr. Nixon said, "sometimes it takes an island."

As the class of 2009 filed across the stage to receive their diplomas, they did so on equal footing. While in high school they had participated in a vast array of activities, constrained by schedules, classes, and commitments. For months they had agonized over the next step to take, the future being ominously inevitable but often intangible.

Graduation is a celebration, but it is also a closing. It was a happy event that honored the fortuitous events that had brought these graduates safely across the stage, but still, there was a note of solemnity, an underlying sense of duty.

On a sunny Sunday amongst friends and family it is so easy to believe that sad events cannot occur; that long life is a given. But one of the graduates who received the loudest applause, was one who could not be in attendance on Sunday. As the family of graduate Kelly McCarron received her diploma, the class of 2009 gave a sustained standing ovation.

Together as one class, the graduates stood and applauded, cries of support echoed through the Tabernacle. No student was an island unto themselves. Indeed, no words seemed more fitting than the unspoken remainder of the phrase from which Mr. Nixon had quoted. "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

Ben Williams, MVRHS class 2008, is a frequent contributor to The Times.