Let the record show that members of the Class of 2016 were urged more than once to put down their cellphones. That kernel of wisdom was shared this past week at Hopkins Academy and at the Hampshire and Gateway regional schools — and maybe elsewhere, too.
Some local speechwriters have been reading parents’ minds.
The advice drew chuckles, but as commencement pronouncements go, it’s probably already forgotten.
This time of year, people who don’t normally speak in public are called upon to craft speeches. Sometimes the muse eludes. But reading over the Gazette’s coverage of recent high school graduations, we found plenty of pearls. Here on the Opinion page we try to curate good thoughts, so a few remarks from graduations get a reprise here today.
Before Friday’s ceremony at Easthampton High School, valedictorian Andrew Connelly was standing with classmates in the auditorium, killing time before the big event down the hall and fretting a bit about his speech. “How do I write something that applies to a hundred people?” he asked. “They’ll go so many different paths.”
But as Connelly and other student speakers found, what binds them, as 2016 graduates, is larger than their differences. After all the years in school, they share this milestone of commencement, an occasion that asks them to put what they’ve learned into perspective.
Messages that student speakers shaped were warm as well as wise. At the risk of sounding like their parents, students asked classmates to invest in other people’s success, to love and respect one another and to be part of something larger than themselves.
Graduates could see that “something” all around them, as their families, grandfathers and baby sisters alike, sat witnessing a passage that comes once in a lifetime.
At Northampton High School, Grace Goodwin-Boyd, a class president, said she and her classmates taught each other to respect human differences. “By membership in our motley crew, you have developed the ability to interact and learn from all types of people,” she said.
She could have added that this gets harder outside school, but becomes all the more important.
As evening came on over an athletic field last Friday at Gateway, Davis B. Britland urged classmates sitting in rows in front of him to value what they already have. “Remember the important things in life, such as love, friendship and happiness. Hug your family, and spend some time talking with them, rather than looking at your phone.”
The simple things, in other words. The lasting ones.
Eighteen miles away, at Hopkins Academy in Hadley, class president Emily Young had a similar message about technology: “As we move forward, let’s remember three principles — be yourself, do what makes you happy and put the cellphone down.”
The guest speaker at Hopkins that night was Michael Burgess, a middle school math teacher chosen by students to help them celebrate. Students spoke of how much he’s helped them succeed, and he gave that appreciation right back, saying at one point, “I love you guys.”
That fellow feeling shouldn’t be fleeting, he said. “Take your love with you. Use it. Use it as your shield, as your weapon. To drop others’ defenses. To enrich your life and to enrich the lives of others,” Burgess said.
Others appealed to students to stand up from the rows of desks that have ordered their days for so many years and get into the driver’s seat of their own lives.
At the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, 1990 graduate Nonie Creme, who built her own cosmetics company from the ground up, told graduates they don’t have to be good looking or smart to succeed. “You have to be brave. You have to put one foot and front of the other and move forward.”
That means acting on dreams. Benjamin Provost told classmates at South Hadley High School on Sunday he planned to heed the advice of a teacher who once told him that people shouldn’t “peak” in high school.
He had heads nodding when he observed, “High school is not the best four years of our lives — at least I sure as hell hope not.” Provost, the co-salutatorian, may soon find out, as he moves on to studies at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Life isn’t a spectator sport, Granby High School speaker Hope Shaw noted, quoting humorist Will Rogers: “Even if you are on the right track you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
In Easthampton, graduate Abigael Fromm was perhaps one of the past week’s most eager seniors. She shared that she’d repeated 11th grade. She seemed to learn something important along the way. “When you realize you’re actually graduating for the first time, you get nervous,” she said. “But as long as you have people in the audience to support you, you can make it through anything.”
These audiences have dispersed, but family remains. Remember that, graduates.