Graduation & Alumni

Each with a different measure of purpose and prevailing mood

Looking at the calendar, the two annual events are separated by only six days—a seemingly short span of time. But in terms of purpose and prevailing mood, they are of a different measure.

On the first Sunday in June, Fowlerville High School holds it graduation ceremony. The following Saturday the Alumni Association puts on a dinner-program, or Alumni as the regular attendees call it.

The first event is a rite of passage with the future being all important, while the second one dwells mainly on the past and how the world once was.

For many years I’ve covered both of these two celebrations, mainly to take photos that will appear in the next issue of the newspaper. This past Graduation, 199 students received diplomas. As they walked one-by-one across the stage, there were cheers and applause from the crowd assembled in the gymnasium—presumably from family members.

Having ‘been there and done that’ with my own son, I can testify it’s a bittersweet occasion. All of those years of their going to school, starting from when they were little tykes, is a period of life that’s now over. Sports, band concerts, science fairs, parent-teacher conferences, chaperoning field trips, homework assignments, and all the rest will now give way to a new regimen. The graduation ceremony, like a bold definitive line, separates one from the other.

But the commencement exercise rarely dwells on such sad thoughts. That’s for parents and any other older adult prone to sentimentality. There’s instead a festive atmosphere, born from the excitement of a milestone reached and all the anticipated adventure of what lies ahead.

“A chapter completed and a new one about to begin” is the usual metaphor employed by speakers.

As for the alumni program, depending on your age, a number of life’s chapters have already been completed by those in attendance; that accumulation of life and living we call experience complete with successes and failures, not to mention hard knocks and satisfactions. But those personal details are generally swept under the rug as classmates reunite for a few hours to recollect—usually in a warm glow—their long-ago school days. To return in mind and spirit to their younger years.

Much laughter, humorous speeches, jokes about the challenges of old age, and comparing the past with present times—with the latter never quite measuring up—are the norm.

I always enjoy this juxtaposition of looking ahead and looking back; the promise of youth and what might lie ahead and the chance to reflect on the distance traveled.

Those nearly two hundred Fowlerville High seniors did indeed start a new chapter, going this way and that as they headed off to their respective tomorrows; never again to be assembled ‘as a whole’ as they were on their graduation day.

True, many will remain in contact, friendships will continue, there’ll be crossing-of-the-paths, and (for those interested) class reunions. Still, for some—whether by choice or circumstance—this was a final parting.

As for those who attend the annual alumni program, or more likely the get-togethers that mark such special anniversaries as their 20th or 50th class reunions, who remain in contact, wishing to keep the ties with their schoolmates tight, the partings come at a more gradual pace.

Another familiar face is gone, present at the last program but not this one, and the memory trees at the reunions, honoring those who have passed away, gain more and more names.

But Alumni is not an occasion of sadness, any more than the students receiving their diplomas are shedding tears. For a moment we are together again “as in days of yore” . . . enjoying the laughter and pleasant company of our schoolmates, lingering in the tender embrace of memory, and reflecting (each in their own way) on the chapters completed and whatever new ones still await.

Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the ‘Fowlerville News & Views’—a weekly newspaper.