“Reflections on a time when education built character, and graduation honored it.” Stepheny Forgue Houghtlin
Evanston Township High School was a top public school in the country when I graduated. I think there were 635+ students in my class. To this day, I’m still in touch with the close friends I made in those years.
We knew we were fortunate. We were prepared, full of energy, curiosity, and unshakable hope. Some of those classmates are gone now, but in my heart, they remain forever young, seated in our caps and gowns, on the floor of the gymnasium.
I have no memory of who spoke at our high school graduation. I doubt any of us do. But what we do remember is how we felt: excited, proud, ready.
From there, I went on to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, the only school I applied to. I loved every minute of it. Life was full of new experiences, my first gin and tonic, my Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority life, the boys wearing coats and ties to the football games, walking across the campus to class in the fall with the smell of tobacco in the air.
Changing the way I wore my bobby socks; in the North we wore them turned down, in the South straight up. Fried Chicken at every Sunday dinner for three years, arranging spring classes in order to go to Keeneland Race Track for the Spring Meet on Thursdays afternoons.
Studying in the library, the Law School students standing in front ogling the new Freshman girls, cheering, calling out.
A dozen years later, married and raising a family in Louisville, I drove back and forth to Lexington to complete my final credits. It was amazing what better grades I made not spending time in the Student Union playing bridge.
When I returned to the campus to finish my degree, I still remember standing in the campus bookstore, buying my books, where a young man behind the counter called me “ma’am.” I knew in that instant I was no longer the girl who’d walked onto campus all those years before, heart full and learning to say, ‘you’ll.’
My diploma arrived by mail rather than going through a graduation ceremony, but to this day I am grateful for the UK days, my Kentucky life and all that entails. I can still read a racing form and there is nothing like Kentucky (and Duke) basketball.
I’ve been thinking about all this because the news is filled with clips from this year’s college graduations. Not of beaming parents or proud faculty, but of speakers at podiums using their few minutes in front of graduates not to inspire, but to posture.
The speeches I heard on video clips have had little to do with honoring the students’ achievements, encouraging their dreams, or offering wisdom. Instead, many have sounded like campaign rallies, filled with grievance, division, and far too much self-regard.
It’s a loss. Because these moments used to be about the graduates. They were sacred send-offs, an occasion to honor the discipline, growth, and transformation that education brings.
What if, instead of today’s political blather, we offered graduates the example of The Wise Men, who helped build the postwar world, who believed that public life was a calling, and who, importantly, had the humility to know they were stewards of something greater than themselves.
Their educations were not just exceptional, but transformative. They emerged from their colleges prepared for lives of serious purpose. Their friendship through the years were great examples to offer a graduating class of what a difference one life can make.
Main Street Rocky Mount 