The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” I hope the words (or at least their promise) from the book of Matthew come clear in this recounting of graduation services I’ve attended.
Late in May, I attended a complete graduation ceremony and part of another. The ceremony I stepped in and out of was to take a photo.
Because our three boys are way past their high school and college years, we’ve skipped quite a few such ceremonies but realize a few grandchildren will soon be coming through the pipe, so we’d best prepare.
The “full” ceremony we attended was for one of our “Euros,” Phaedra Wouters, from Belgium. As many as eight non-WLV-connected people attended the graduation because of Phaedra. There was Belen, a World College student from Spain. Also there was an out-of-town volunteer for the program that places students from other countries. Several of us Trujillos attended. And a couple of other exchange students, from other New Mexico cities, Rama and Wasif, joined us.
If we have any lament, it’s over the lack of celebration. Was I upset that the WLV program bordered on too much pomp and not enough circumstance? The comparison I’m making is with some of the 30 commencement ceremonies I participated in while working at Highlands.
Now back in the olden days, when I was a student, all commencements were at Ilfeld Auditorium. The crowd was subdued and polite, and the auditorium was never filled to capacity.
We had a genial but firm dean of students, Ray Farmer, who patrolled the grounds as we lined up to march into Ilfeld while the Highlands band played. Farmer made certain each graduate knew his or her spot in line and insisted that we follow an exact cadence as we processed down the two aisles: walk slowly and meet your partner in the middle, but don’t you dare do-si-do.
That was back in the ‘60s. Things changed in the ‘70s, with spectators carrying along ear-piercing cans of compressed air whose only purpose is to create noise. When the larger graduating classes moved into Stu Clark Gym and later Wilson Complex, some playful types brought huge beach balls, batting them from the upper levels and waiting for people at ground level, including graduates, to take part in the volley.
And let’s not forget the Silly String, made possible by a pressurized can that shot out — well, silly string.
One year, former State Sen. Manny Aragon was the commencement speaker. Many of us believe it was more of a movida to introduce the South Valley politico to Highlands, and Highlands to him. As the man who later briefly became president of Highlands spoke on the oh-so-predictable theses of “You hold the key to the future,” “Success comes in cans; failure comes in can’ts,” and “Remember, ‘commencement’ means the beginning, not the end,” lots of ball-bouncing ensued.
The quick-thinking Democrat senate majority leader used the ball-bouncing metaphor to remark that “life is full of ups and downs.” But I doubt many people caught that allusion, their being too busy trying to catch and bat away the beach balls.
During one of the commencements, an out-of-state athlete’s name was called. As he approached the stage to claim his sheepskin, some members of the audience began shouting “hoop, hoop, hoop.” Maybe the student had sunk a lot of them during his tenure as a Cowboy basketball player. Regardless, a professor who’d sat next to me told me the next day how embarrassed and upset he’d become at hearing the derision.
Well in fact, members of the crowd were simply shouting “hoop,” apparently the shortening of his name. My colleague had mistaken “hoop” for “boo.” And he seemed to feel much better with my explanation.
Another graduation I will never forget was a massive ceremony held in Santa Fe’s open air, as several hundred Santa Fe High School seniors graduated. My brother, the late Severino, had a child in the graduation line that year and good naturedly suggested that rather than tediously announcing all the graduates’ names, from Aaron Abers to Zenon Zuniga, the superintendent of schools could instead shout out, pep-rally style, “Give me an ‘A,’” and those with surnames beginning with that letter would approach the stage.
Crowds being what they are, things might have gotten out of hand. One parent of a graduate wrote a letter to the editor the following day commenting on the crowd’s behavior. She wrote that not long into the ceremony, those whose child had already received a diploma left their seats and stepped onto the football field to hug and photograph their own precious kid.
The letter writer said, “My son is blessed, and sometimes cursed with a last name beginning with a ‘Z.’” She added that “Parents of daughters or sons who had already crossed the stage decided to go on to the field. The commencement turned into a sports event — people milling about, talking, shouting to each other, hawking programs and water.
“These were not kids; these were parents and grandparents who showed no respect for those graduates with last names occurring late in the alphabet.”
The graduate’s name, by the way, is Nicholas Raymond Zvelebil, guaranteed to be last in any queue, unless he has a sibling named Zeke.
• • •
Why are so many things arranged alphabetically?
Some day soon I will mention a Thanksgiving dinner some of us enjoyed when I attended our local Immaculate Conception School.
Yes — you guessed it: Our homeroom teacher, Sister Mary Comes Tanto, lined us up alphabetically at the serving line. That was a good deal for Alan Aragon and Abby Adams, who consumed turkey breasts and drumsticks, but not such a great thing for people like Pat Wilson and Jane Yarbrough, who ate gizzards, feathers and some green stuff.