Last Word
History Repeating On the morning of June 14, 1921, the Academy’s 105th graduating class processed out of Baxter Hall, across Chellis Road toward Meriden’s stone church. The 22 graduates of the Class of 1921, including 15 young women and seven young men, were mostly local, hailing from New Hampshire and Vermont. One graduate called Brooklyn, New York, home. One hundred years later, the 110 graduates of the Class of 2021 spanned 17 U.S. states and 16 countries. On May 22, graduating seniors once again processed down Chellis Road, this time for the Academy’s 205th Commencement. Accommodations for social distancing moved the ceremony to Pope Field, and travel restrictions prohibited some members of the class from returning to campus to receive their diplomas in person.
Despite spanning a century, these two classes share more than a common path to commencement. For both, the world’s challenges arrived on The Hilltop for their high school tenures. The first classes born entirely after the turn of a century, their teenage years were punctuated by pandemics—first the 1918 flu and today COVID-19. These students took up meaningful causes to make change in the world, including the women’s suffrage movement and Black Lives Matter. Although each commencement looks and feels somewhat different, the ceremonies and rites of passage all honor the individual and collective achievements of our graduates and the contributions they make as they go out into the world—whether in 1921 or 2021.
