Prize Day 2010 Groton student. However, as I stand before you, I can honestly admit that such a realization never came—or rather, not one of the quality which I imagined. I had always pictured the moment, sitting in Chapel, when I would finally understand Mr. Walters’ Chapel Talk. An event like this, I thoughtfully mused, would truly prove my worth as a mature Groton student, a sixth former with impressive intellectual capabilities. Sadly, this year, Mr. Walters ended with a curve ball. After pairing up with one of the more enigmatic faculty members, my own advisor, Mr. Creamer, I endured twenty minutes of painstaking mental gymnastics. They told us, “When you place two objects next to each other and they collide, a star is created!” I looked at Mr. Creamer’s projected pictures of trees and leaves. Nothing made sense. The only level of understanding I reached that day is the possibility that Mr. Walters’ Chapel Talks were social experiments, and that in fact, even he did not understand the meaning of his alliterated and self-created poems. Instead, I leave Groton with all of my fragments; these different pieces that I know, in ways unclear to me now, will prove to be invaluable in my future endeavors. Similarly, I believe that you, the Form of 2010, will all leave these wrought-iron gates with your own pieces— your own maniacal letters, your own conversations, your understandings, or misunderstandings, the friendships each of you have formed with teachers and fellow students alike, different places around Groton where you have shed your inopportune and often embarrassing tears. I’m sure, after witnessing your talents, character, integrity, and mental acuity over the last four years, many of you have had the sort of realizations that make Mr. Walters seem like an illiterate pauper. But, if by an off chance you, like me, haven’t completed your picture of the past four years flawlessly, I leave you with the words of another writer whom I harbor intense, passionate feelings about. Unfortunately, William Stafford—rest in peace—died in 1993. Since I was only one year old, and barely cognizant at the time, he unfortunately wasn’t able to receive one of my dazzling expressions of adoration. In his poem, “For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid,” he writes: There is a country to cross you will find in the corner of your eye, in the quick slip of your foot--air far down, a snap that might have caught. And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing voice that finds its way by being afraid. That country is there, for us, carried as it is crossed. What you fear will not go away: it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That’s the world, and we all live there.
Cum Laude graduate and 2010 Choir Cup winner Cristina Hackley stands with her family
I hope that you, my impressive formmates and lifetime friends, you the Form of 2010, leave today with the knowledge that you have the pieces, however fragmented they may be, to do anything, to overcome the fears and obstacles that present themselves to you in the coming years. With a foundation rooted in a Groton education, I am certain that we all have the capabilities to pursue great things, wherever our separate lives may lead us. Thank you. * * *
Awarding of Groton School Prizes (see p.33) * * *
Richard B. Commons, Headmaster
A
nd now I have the distinct honor of introducing our keynote speaker, Willard Mitt Romney, who governed the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and who, according to polls and pundits, is currently the leading candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for President of the United States. Governor Romney graduated from Cranbrook School in Michigan, which is not unlike Groton in its mission and national reputation. At his high school graduation, according to the Boston Globe, June 12, 2005, he was awarded the prize given to a student “whose contributions Quarterly Fall 2010
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