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A Very Special Commencement

We've created a DVD featuring video of the day's events. On our DVD, you have the choice of watching:

• The complete ceremony
• Alumni and family interviews
• Ceremony highlights and excerpts of the interviews

Check out a preview of it here!

Copies of the DVD can be ordered here.

Before Ceremony Slideshow

During Ceremony Slideshow

After Ceremony Slideshow

Evening Social Slideshow

For the more than 300 alumni of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture, June 10, 2006, was graduation day. From the first class in 1920 through the class of 1960, students were awarded a certificate when they completed the school's two-year program. In 1961, the school's policy was changed, and Stockbridge graduates were awarded an Associate of Science degree. On June 10, the pre-1961 graduates and their families and friends arrived at the Mullins Center for a very special commencement.

The day began early. Many alumni arrived to register for the full day of events at 9 a.m. Some graduates and their families took advantage of the tours of Hadley Farm and the Joseph Troll Turf Research Facility offered by the school. But more and more arrived throughout the morning in search of old friends and classmates. George Roaf ('48), who came with his son, a 1973 Stockbridge graduate, reconnected with a few classmates in the morning and said he'd "probably see more before the day is out. I think 17 or 18 signed up."

Before the 2 p.m. ceremony, the Stockbridge Alumni Association hosted a lunch on the concourse. People quickly claimed tables for their class years, and before the food was even served, mini-reunions were in full swing. Chester Dorchester ('41) was one of "six or seven of us having a little reunion after 65 years." H.G. Koehler III ('54) credited classmate Rolfe Hayes with organizing another reunion: "He called us and got us to come. And we're very happy we came!"

For the class of 1956, a fiftieth-year reunion was celebrated with a separate lunch, attended by Chancellor Lombardi, Dean Cleve Willis, and guest speaker Jack Smith, former CEO of General Motors and a 1960 UMass Amherst graduate who came to accept his late father's degree. Wendell Lawrence ('56) thought it was "significant coming back to the fiftieth reunion and seeing some of the old classmates that I haven't seen for a while." He added that he was surprised to be getting the diploma because " it was something we tried to achieve fifty years ago. To see it happen, I'm very pleased. It's an honor."

During the ceremony, veterans were asked to stand and be honored for their service, and there was a moment of silence for all the graduates who could not be there. Then, each attendee's name was read and the associate's degrees were conferred. Chancellor Lombardi congratulated the graduates by saying, "Unlike at other graduations, I don't have to guess how it works out, or hope that it works out. You have earned this degree many times over." As the commencement ceremony came to a close, the audience of friends and family gave the graduates a standing ovation.

Celebration, story swapping, and reminiscing continued through the reception following the ceremony and into the night, when alumni gathered at an evening social in the Campus Center to end the day with long-lost and lifelong friends.