To The Class of 2012: Vincit Omnia!

Battle Ground Academy

123rd Commencement Address

by Dr. John Griffith, Head of School

May 20, 2012

Last year at commencement, I paid tribute to the writer Shel Silverstein.  While I thought of a lot of structures for a poem to celebrate this class, I had one that I kept revisiting.  Although I have used the model before, I wanted to adapt it for the class of 2012.  After years of reading wonderful children’s books to our three-year old daughter Claire, I cannot help but have some place in the synapses in my brain that is entirely occupied by the rhythms of Theodore Seuss Geisel, or Dr. Seuss.  Moreover, this is commencement, after all, and endings and beginnings are on all of our minds, and Dr. Seuss is a great one for beginnings.

As I have said before, I have always felt a connection to Dr. Seuss, perhaps because he had lived across the quad from me at Oxford or spent a lot of his youth in the same part of New England.  Though you will hear a lot of sage advice this weekend, I want to focus on your Seussian qualities: your quirkiness, your humor, your absurdity, your sense of fun, your kindness, your passion, your compassion.  All of these qualities are evident in the anthropomorphic creatures who inhabit the work of Theodore Geisel.  So with apologies to Dr. Seuss, I have written an occasional poem for the class of 2012.

“How did it get so late so soon?

It’s night before it’s afternoon.

December is here before its June.   

My goodness how the time has flewn.

Is commencement day here so soon?

You’ve sung on the stages of Carnegie Hall
You have showed horses, played hoops,
Scored clinch soccer goals.

You’ve played the piano and ping pong and dodge ball,

Bowled in the states, and kept us enthralled.
You have tutored and mentored,

You have golfed and won races.

You have dressed up as wildcats

And painted your faces.

You have gamboled, cavorted, on countdown days,

You have hackeyed and partied, hoorahed and hoorayed.

You have cherished our honor code,

And have made time for fun,

You have played lots of baseball,
While there was stats to be done.

You had classes recumbent, and conversed in the sun.

You have hollered and cheered,

Pulled for Plato or Greer;

You have acted in Fools

And in many a show,

You have wowed us in Guys and Dolls

As you no doubt know.

You have danced and done tumbles,

Set, spiked, and rumbled.

You have played tennis, and football, and worn soccer cleats;

You’ve won at mock trial,

You’ve studied the Greeks.

You have beaten a lot of great teams on the way

A few that we treasure, BA, MBA.

You are National Merits,

You have bled gold and blue.

Today you are You,

That is truer than true.

There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

We praise scholar-athletes,

And the great feats they’ve done,

We celebrate the Mack Hatcher Mob,

Who helped us to have fun,

We stop to praise the introverts,

The extroverts, the funny,

We give a nod to pragmatists

Who’ll go out and make the money,

The orators, the altruists,

The wrestlers and the runners,

The jazz cats, the cheerleaders,

And the go-out-and-have-funners.

You are tall, you are thin.

You are legacies, you are twins.

Though your parents have fought you

And prayed for and taught you

And tried hard at times not to

Strangle or throttle you.

They are proud you’ve been feted

And much celebrated

As you leave BGA

Your friends are elated.

Your heads crammed with facts but your zest’s unabated.

You’ve been irrepressible,

(I think you know who)

And simply unguessable

In some things you do.

Your voices are loud,

Singing out with the crowd. . .

Though you’ve had some demerits,

You would not be cowed.

You have made your mistakes

Though none too egregious.
You’ve baffled, surprised,

Delighted, and pleased us.

You’ve done all these things, but there’s much more to do

And where you will travel, we have scarcely a clue:

You’ll go off to Auburn,

Play ball at Sewanee

You’ll be landing at Samford, you’ll cheer for UT.

You will wow them at Centre, U Penn & Wake Forest,

WPI, Kentucky, and Belmont, of course.

You will QB at Iowa, study nursing at Martin

Play jazz and write tunes at the College of Charleston

Take the gridiron for Yale; dance at OSU,

Barnard, Ol’ Miss, UVM, and IU.

To Martin, TN Tech, and MTSU,

To Northwestern (it’s cold there) and to David Lipscomb

You’ll wow them at UTC, Roll Tide, and Princeton,

You’ll ride horses at Maryville

Pellissippi, and Richmond,

You’ll go on to be Generals, you’ll be singing at Furman

You’ll shine on the diamond of Walters State,  

Places Mr. Whitehill had told you were great:

Brown, Freed Hardiman, and to SLU.
You’re off to the navy, to Vanderbilt, too,

Campbellsville, CS, and Bellermine U

Eckerd, Southern Miss, and ETSU.

But wherever you go

And whatever you do

You will do greater things

Than most others will do. . .

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the ones who'll decide where to go.

You’ll be on your way up

You’ll be seeing great sights

You’ll join the high-flyers who’ve soared to high heights.

So from all of your teachers:

The tall and the small

The hirsute and those without much hair at all.

The bearded, the peevish, the kind and the tart,

The ones with great brains,
And the ones with great art.

For education, Yeats said,

And he said it so well. . .

Is a fire to be lit,

Not a pale to be filled.

And Seuss himself said in his Seussian way

That all good schools will have really one thing to say. . .

He said schools that count,

At the end or the start

Are the schools that have trained

Both the brain,

And the heart.

And though we’re not Diffendorfer School,

To these seniors we can say. . .

We’ve been blessed to have you with us,

And we wish that you could stay.

So to all BGA wildcats on this most auspicious day

Vincit omnia, conquer all,

Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!”