Commencement

Stately Measures of an Ordered World

THEY played meteorological roulette at Commencement 205, betting 5,000 chairs, a stack of good will and a possible logistic nightmare that the gray, lowering skies wouldn't open up, unzippering a flood of rain on the neat, symmetrical arrangements on Baker's lawn. They won that bet and, perhaps because of the submerged tension until the first vagrant sunlight peeked through at 11:13 a.m., it was as serene and satisfying a ceremony as any in recent years.

It wasn't an easy bet, for the weather at 9 a.m., an hour or so before things were to commence, was anything but promising or June-like. It was a horizon-to-horizon overcast, the color of old sweat-socks, and the wind out of the northwest was a she-wolf on occasion.

In fact, it was more Memorial Field weather for that last November football game than Baker lawn for June beginnings. As the proud parents (and brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and grandparents) began to file into the chair-lined area, it was easy to spot the old-stagers, for they had come with blankets, sweaters, topcoats. And brollies.

But the grasshoppers of this world were there, too, and they made it, chilblains and all, the gay and kaleidoscopic thing that a Commencement should be. There was the usual female finery, some of it mad and smart and some of it both chic and sensible (stunning pant suits, for example); and the male animal was showing a bit of color, too, with a flash of white buck here and a splash of green beret there. Blazers were big.

Here's how confusing the weather picture was. For two or three days before Commencement Sunday (some people said it seemed like a month), the weather had been ... well, unsettled and dicey. At 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, the Lebanon Regional Airport told Fritz Hier '44, the major domo of Commencement, that there was no precipitation for 100 miles and that things would clear up. Comforting, At approximately the same hour, the weather plane that is sent up each year in a last-minute-check-everything mood was still on the ground at the Post Mills, Vermont, air-strip, socked in. Distressing.

But "forge ahead" was the decision and ahead they forged. The Connecticut Brass Quintet nicely and brassily tootled forth from the Baker Tower in a Class of 1879 Trumpeter presentation beginning at 9:45. Then, after running through a peal, the bells of Baker swung into the Hanover Winter Song, which surely was apropos, but unfortunately no fire was handy to have a song by. Indeed, one reporter's notes, rescued from the heel-trodden lawn afterwards, read: "10:07, hands not quite blue (light lavender?)."

Then, things began. At 10:19, the 50-Year-Class, led by three members of the Class of 1910 (and Marshal Professor Jere Daniell '55) marched proudly down the aisle, to be greeted by a warm and continued salvo of applause. By now the Connecticut Brass was featly down from the tower and amalgamated with the Hanover Brass Quintet, to make a very respectable Brass Ensemble. One of them, a winsome blond lady horn player, was dashingly and level-headedly clad in a serape.

At 10:43, the massed brass blared and the procession, that never-failing delight of color and class, began. After those Vermont Highlanders, Scott Hastings (Taftsville) and Fordyce Ritchie (Springfield) had skirled the pathways clean for the seniors and all had been seated, deans and dons, parents and pupils, the real business of the day began.

The familiar and treasured phrases rolled out: "honoris causa," by virtue of the authority granted to me," "and I present them to you" - and now few among the crowd watched or worried about the weather, caught up as they were in the stately measures of an ordered world. The star turn was, as it always is and always should be, the 731 seniors being given the baccalaureate badge.

But there were nice touches in the supporting roles, too. Senior Faculty Marshal John V. Neale, retiring after 41 years in the speech department, saying quietly (it was almost blown away on the wind) but firmly to the seated graduates, "We on the faculty want you to know that we love you." Chris Peisch, long-distance runner and Rhodes Scholar-to-be, delivering an earnest, thoughtful, and human Valedictory. John Kemeny, as usual, displaying niftily agile footwork that would have made Pele green with envy, particularly in deflecting some good-natured senior-class hisses at the mention of Harvard (who?).

Then, at 11:13 the sun struggled to come through the gray curtain as the Tuck School contingent was getting its MBAs (weather, like business, bottoming out?). Poetically, the rescued notes of the forgetfill reporter record at 11:40, "patches of blue during Capt. Kangaroo." And the skies did fitfully clear, shedding brief, but welcome, bits of tiny warmth.

When the star turn arrived, a clot of cameras formed at the right and left in front of the degree-awarding stage. While the click of shutters and the flash of bulbs was almost constant, the lineup of shutter-clickers and bulb-poppers was in steady and harmonious flux. No elbow-digging, no pushing, just a quiet and polite shuttle in and out of what was fondly hoped to be camera range. One wonders how many feet? yards? furlongs? of film is used up at the average Dartmouth Commencement. A statistic for the late Robert Ripley to conjure with.

At about the "H" mark in the alphabetic march through the newly-minted A.B.-holders, the full sun came out, vindicating Major Domo Hier and the Lebanon Regional Airport. And a pox on thee, Post Mills!

After a full verse of "Men of Dartmouth" had been trumpted forth by the Brass Ensemble - and no one knew whether to sing then or not - all hands joined lustily in belting out the first two verses, with the brass behind. Then 205 was over and 206 was in a hazy holding pattern, a twelvemonth off.

It was time for more formal, straight-up, non-candid, cap-and-gown photos, with parents and siblings taking turns posing with the properly proud graduates. It was also time for packing cars with foot-lockers, duffel bags, arms-full of bedding, lacrosse sticks, stereos, and posters. Time, too, for fragmented, hurried, somewhat stiff good-byes.

John Kemeny had whimsically said, in the opening of his thoughtful valedictory to the class, that "Traditionally, the President has the last word to the seniors. Each year, I find it is my most awesome responsibility - how can I make up for in five minutes what you did not learn in four years?"

It was, to be sure, a rhetorical question. He did not want, or expect, an answer. For there certainly was no time for that.

Outlined against a cold, gray June sky ...newly minted M.D. Jeral Ahtone (left), anOklahoma Kiowa; a son's reward (above);some of Kodak's legion (right); and a scenefrom Class Day (below) when it did rain.

Outlined against a cold, gray June sky ...newly minted M.D. Jeral Ahtone (left), anOklahoma Kiowa; a son's reward (above);some of Kodak's legion (right); and a scenefrom Class Day (below) when it did rain.

Outlined against a cold, gray June sky ...newly minted M.D. Jeral Ahtone (left), anOklahoma Kiowa; a son's reward (above);some of Kodak's legion (right); and a scenefrom Class Day (below) when it did rain.