May and June make up a particular kind of annual season: graduation time.
I’ve had two graduations, like many people, and I only attended one. I skipped my UMass Amherst graduation as I didn’t see the point of making my parents sit in a football stadium and strain to see me among a sea of graduates on a warm day.
My high school graduation was different. I did attend that one.
The reason I’m writing about this milestone that most people share is that I’m facing my 50th anniversary. I graduated in June 1972.
I have to admit it certainly underscores my advancing age.
In 1972, the personal computer was science fiction and only Dick Tracy had a device that resembled a cell phone. We had two phones in the house, with one in the basement I would use to make confidential calls, such as talking to my girlfriend at the time. There were two daily newspapers delivered to our home through the week and we could regularly get three TV stations – sometimes, if the wind were blowing the right way, we received a couple more from Hartford, CT. Before we started producing our own milk, we had a Hood milkman coming to the house.
It was a very, very different world.
In 1972, I couldn’t even attempt to understand what the future had in store for me. I knew I would be going to UMass. I knew I would be majoring in English/Journalism. I knew I would be commuting and living at home to help on the farm. I knew I would continue my part-time job at the Basketball of Fame.
That was about it. The future just seemed so very far away and out of focus.
I graduated from Granby (MA) Junior-Senior High School in a class of 108 people. Although I did well in school, I was not any award-winner.
The graduation came after all of us had served an internship during the month of May. I was at the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram re-writing press releases. It was a significant event in my life, further underscoring what I wanted to pursue as an adult.
Our graduation was conducted on the front lawn of the high school on a pleasant June day. Our graduation speaker was the sitting congressman at the time, the legendary Silvio O. Conte. On graduation day, Conte was flying to Bradley Airport from Washington, DC and our assistant principal, Dave Hyatt, was charged with picking him up and bringing him to Granby.
As the time drew closer for the ceremony, there was no Dave Hyatt and no congressman. Our principal held the event back, but finally had to start it.
The ceremony was in full swing when we all spotted a convertible hurtling down Route 202 in front of the high school. It was Dave Hyatt and the congressman in Hyatt’s car. Hyatt entered the driveway and made a sharp turn, cutting across the lawn.
It was dramatic to say the least.
I can’t recall if Conte was shaken by Hyatt’s driving, and I wonder now what the vice principal and Conte discussed in the trip from the airport.
I have no memory of what Conte said to us. I’m sure it was the sort of wisdom that is usually dispensed at a graduation.
Looking back, it’s amazing that Conte consented to be our speaker. Granby was – and still remains – a fairly small town and from a political point of view there was little currency to be made with such an appearance.
That was so long ago.
So, at some point in June I’m hoping that perhaps a few members can get together and life a glass to the fact that 50 years later most of us are still standing.
Michael Dobbs is the executive editor for Reminder Publishing LLC., and in that role oversees the production of the company’s 10 free community weekly newspapers – the East Longmeadow Reminder, the Agawam Reminder, the Easthampton Reminder, the Holyoke Reminder, the Northampton Reminder, the Amherst Reminder, the Ludlow Reminder, the Monson-Palmer Reminder, the Chicopee Herald and the Westfield Pennysaver – as well as a daily newspaper, the Westfield News, monthly lifestyle magazine Go Local and the monthly publication of Prime.
