Circiter | Featured on Campus “Groton is a half-step between your family and the world, a precious interlude, a gentle meritocracy.”
The Honorable James H. S. Cooper addresses the Form.
The Honorable James H.S. Cooper ’72
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o Mr. Commons, President Higgins, Members of the Board of Trustees, Faculty, Staff, and especially to the Sixth Form of 2008 and your families and friends, thank you. I am deeply honored to speak on such an important day. I feel as if I were asked to give thanks at a large family reunion: everyone is already grateful…but will be even more grateful if I keep it short. Allow me a moment of personal reflection. My father died before he could attend my Prize Day, so I am doubly thankful to experience the pure joy of my daughter Mary’s graduation. Fortunately, my mother was always there for me and my two brothers, and is here today for her granddaughter. Mama is 89 years old and is particularly close to Mary, because Mary is the only girl born into the Cooper family since 1892. That’s right, the only girl in almost 100 years. Of course, Groton waited almost as long for its first girl. Co-education was unthinkable in my day—actually, that’s not quite right: girls were all we thought about—but it’s wonderful to see young women enhancing all aspects of school life. I just wish that the brilliance and beauty of this day could last forever. I also want to pay tribute to Charlie Alexander, who is retiring after 48 wonderful years. He and Anne are exemplars of Groton’s greatness. He not only taught me Latin, but about life—although we called it football, sit-down dinner, parlor, squash, and college admissions. Mr. Alexander, along with Mr. Sackett, Mr. Choate, Mr. Brown, and Warren and Micheline Meyers, are part of what my generation will always view as the Golden Age of faculty masters, that is, the age before cell-phones, iPods, and texting. Thirty years from now, you Sixth Formers will celebrate your own memories—such as Mr. Goodrich’s class on Moby Dick, Madame Coursaget’s costumes, or Andy Anderson’s miraculous crew coaching. You’ll revere your teachers like Messrs. Belsky, Black, and Das, just as my generation cherishes Paul Wright, Dick Irons, Corky Nichols, Mel Mansur, Charlie Shearin, Norris Getty, Harvey Sargisson, and other great souls. Their classrooms, conversations, and, yes, quirks were, for a brief moment, the center of our universe. In other words, I can still mimic each of them.
12 | Quarterly September 2008
My topic today is, as Mr. Lyons knows better than I, perhaps the most famous sentence ever used in oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. The attorney was Daniel Webster. The year was 1818. The Supreme Court was meeting in a rented house in Washington, D.C., near the burned-out shell of the U.S. Capitol, torched by the British in the War of 1812. The case was Dartmouth College v. Woodward. Webster was defending the rights of the small, private college against takeover by the New Hampshire legislature. Webster concluded his argument with a phrase that brought a tear to the eye of Chief Justice Marshall: “It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it.” “A small school…and yet there are those who love it.” The word love is seldom used in law, and even less frequently in Supreme Court argument. But Webster’s alma mater was beloved, despite…or perhaps because of…its diminutive size. Just like Groton. Of the finest schools in the world, Groton is one of the very smallest, and deliberately so. “And yet, there are those who love it.” We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters know that Groton is so intimate and excellent that it grabs your heart and never lets go. We love it more because it is so small. Groton can be inspiring, infuriating, nurturing and annoying, but is, above all, completely consuming. Underformers, Mary Kinsella (leading), and Emanuel Adeola and Alex Southmayd (with candles) process from Prize Day Services