Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This July 1988 Classic article takes a historical look at Baylor commencement – the final stepping stone in every Bear’s journey before becoming an alumnus. Whether you graduated at the Coliseum, at one of Baylor’s few outdoor ceremonies, or at the Ferrell Center, I hope this article sparks a few memories of your special day.
As Randy Wayne Zgabay stepped up to grab his diploma May 13, he thought he was going to be the last Baylor student ever to graduate in the Heart o’ Texas Coliseum, the usual site of commencement since 1953. (Next year’s ceremony will be in the Ferrell Special Events Center.) But Sabrina Castaneda, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, had overslept that morning and rushed to The Barn just in time to usurp Randy’s honor.
“I’ve been last all my life,” he said. “I was kinda proud to be the last man, bringing up the tail end. . . . I was standing there in line when she showed up.” Randy said that if he had to do it again he would remain on stage until Sabrina had already passed by in order to execute the honor that is still at least officially his. “I earned the title, but she overslept,” he said.
Commencement: For faculty, this is the High Holy Day when academic pomp is acceptable. For students, this is the Victory Day when they sing their first “That Good Old Baylor Line” as alumni — some with tears, some with fear, and some with relief.
There is much that never changes about commencements: the small sea of mortar boards near the stage . . . the occasional waves between families and distant children (“No, Mom, over HERE; you’re waving at the wrong red-head!”) . . . the fanning of programs . . . the muffled anticipation. But though the atmosphere may be the same, each year the cast of black-robed characters is different. And more slowly other things change: the style, the location, and, perhaps most importantly for those directly involved, the length.
“It used to be a physical ordeal,” former President Abner V. McCall, a veteran of more than two hundred commencements, said. McCall presided over Baylor’s graduation exercises from 1961 to 1981. “I’ve served my time,” he said.
And he served it efficiently. McCall would calculate the speed at which seniors were graduating in order to make sure the ceremony was moving along at a tolerable rate. For McCall, a good clip was about five grads per minute, or one every twelve seconds. But with some one thousand students this could still mean a marathon of more than three hours.
“By the time you’ve shaken three or four hundred hands, you’re worn out,” he said.
Sometimes more than worn out. For McCall, commencement could turn into a literally bloody, finger-twisting experience. For every football player who wanted to “give it to ya” with an iron-vice handshake, it seemed there was a corresponding young lady with a high-pronged engagement ring.
“I nearly always came away with my hands a little ripped.” he said — often with shocking consequences for graduates, who might come away from his congratulations red-handed.
Such dangers do not daunt President Herbert H. Reynolds, the current hand-shaker.
“I think the students need a strong grip for them to know that I am pleased and that each of them is very special to me,” he said. “They’ve worked hard, and I know they yearn for a hearty congratulations.”
Reynolds has a well developed system for knowing just how hearty to be with each graduate. If just the student’s name is called, a mere “Congratulations” is in order; cum laude grads receive a “Warm congratulations”; with magna cum laude, the temperature increases to “Very warm congratulations”; and the summa cum laude students receive their sheepskins with an emphatic “That’s just great!”
As thorough as planning like this may be, however, Baylor presidents have come to expect the unexpected at commencement. This is especially so when U.S. presidents are also in
attendance. In 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower had come to the coliseum to receive an honorary law degree. (In accordance with White House demands, two ten-ton air conditioners had been flown in to keep the speakers’ platform enveloped in a 65-degree cloud of air — “The President must be kept cool.”) Discovering that his chair wobbled on uneven boards, Ike tried to correct it by picking up the chair under him and hopping back a few inches — right into the shins of Abner McCall.
“I was the only man who was ever personally wounded by President Eisenhower,” he said. “I should have gotten a Purple Heart for it.”
Commencement was the scene of another presidential visit in 1965. Lyndon Baines Johnson, the great- grandson of Baylor’s third president, arrived twenty minutes late for the nationally televised event to discover he had left his speech on Air Force One in Austin. A reporter who had happened to grab a press copy of the address on the plane saved the day; and LBJ, albeit in a foul mood, got off a vague discourse on the Dominican Republic. All the while a torrent of rain beat on the corrugated metal roof of the vast humid hall, and a steady drip of water from the rafters came down precisely in front of the president’s nose for the entirety of the address.
McCall said that after experiencing the press-and-police circus of presidential visits and the way they blotted out the real stars of commencement, “I swore we’d never have another one.”
Apparently, over time, this same attitude has developed towards the veritable institution of graduation ceremonies — the commencement address. In earlier days, this had been the grand finale to a week-long series of class reunions, alumni banquets, building dedications, concerts, dramas, student art exhibitions, poetry readings, debates and oratories.
In 1884, for example, the evening commencement address, “Our Youth, the Nation’s Hope,” was preceded that morning by no fewer than thirty-seven speeches, including “Education without Christianity, a Failure” and “The Conflict between Alcohol and Modern Civilization.” But as the graduating classes grew larger and ceremonies became longer, hearing even one speaker was wearisome.
By the time a younger Reynolds was receiving his master of science degree in psychology in 1958, commencement was pushing four hours.
“To say that people were less than excited would be a gross understatement,” Reynolds recalled.
The address given that year — “Liberal Education in a Scientific Age,” by a biology professor from Johns Hopkins University — is tucked away in the files of the Texas Collection Library. It is twenty-one pages long and smells distinctly of formaldehyde. References to evolution and “the half-ape that was once man” have been carefully penciled out. Apparently, the speaker did some last-minute editing for his Baylor audience.
By 1966 a brief “charge” to the graduates had taken the place of the address, and the streamlining that had been occurring for decades produced the two-day event Baylor presently has. But through these changes one essential element has survived: the individual conferring of degrees. Indeed most of the streamlining has been done in order to keep this the central event. According to McCall, Baylor has felt that it is far better to conserve time by sacrificing
speeches than to take away each student’s Big Moment by resorting to an en masse commissioning.
And besides, he said, “Papa and Mama want to see ’em go across the stage” — perhaps the weightiest consideration of all.
Baylor presidents have nearly always given the charge. Dr. Reynolds, whose charge usually stems from one of the dozen books he is reading at the time, said that he desires to impart something that will make a difference in students’ lives down the years.
“I try to bring about a sense of fruition to all they have done and a sense of closure,” he said. “I also try to make it brief enough so they can hang on to a few items that are said.”
Reynolds said that he annually makes it a point to invite the new alumni to “return home” as often as they can.
Some even make it to his office before that invitation is extended. A few days before the 1974 commencement, a would-be graduate came to Reynolds in tears and told him he had
just discovered he lacked one academic hour. His parents had already begun the drive to Waco from California — it was too late to notify them.
Reynolds had an idea: “Go see Dr. Roy Butler in the classics department and get me the Latin phrase for ‘almost finished’,” he told the dean of the college of arts and sciences.
Commencement came, and for the first time in academic history a new distinction was conferred: “Bachelor of Arts paene perfectus.”
The student finished the hour of credit the following semester.
Commencements have reflected the times During World War II, Baylor men caught buses for boot camp the moment graduation ended — some never to see their first Homecoming. In one Cold-War-era baccalaureate sermon, Pastor Joe Weldon Bailey made no bones about his assertion, “You are pro-Communist if you are a nominal Christian.” And when but the Ring Out of 1970 would the permanent class president recite a scathing “poem” by Simon and Garfunkel?
And as words have reflected the times, so has the location reflected the size of Baylor’s ever-increasing crop: from 1903 to 1929, graduation took place in Carroll Chapel; from 1930 to 1952, it was usually in Waco Hall; from 1953 to this year, the less-than-elegant but thoroughly serviceable coliseum was the normal site; and now, it will be within the 10,000-seat Dome of the Brazos.
In the transition time from Waco Hall to the fairgrounds there were several ill-fated attempts at outdoor commencements — at the Municipal Stadium on Fourteenth and Dutton, at Baylor Stadium, and in the former “SUB Bowl.” But Texas weather inevitably made these unpredictable affairs.
The last attempt in 1954 convinced Baylor to stay indoors for good. As Kentucky poet Jesse Stuart began his address, dark clouds rolled in. Stuart, a dramatic if long-winded orator, raised his hand in a sweeping gesture — only to watch the first blast of an incoming gale sweep his speech off the podium and scatter it all over Baylor Stadium. Spectators and grads alike scrambled to recover the papers, but since they were now hopelessly out of order, he put
them aside and ad-libbed a blazing sermon on the Ten Commandments.
“Whatever speech he had, it blew away,” McCall, dean of the law school at the time, said.
Another exception to the Tin-Roof era was Baylor’s attempt in 1980 and 1981 to bring commencement back to campus by dividing it into several ceremonies at Waco Hall. The first year there were three: two on Friday and one on Saturday. But even so, hundreds of parents had to watch via closed-circuit television in Roxy Grove Hall. Then in 1981 came the Grand Experiment: four commencements — and Ring Out — in one day. It didn’t work. McCall and Reynolds, exhausted, decided that very evening to return to the coliseum, where things have flowed relatively smoothly ever since.
That they flow smoothly is no accident. The commencement committee (under Mary E. Norman, dean of academic services), the marshals, the ushers, and the staff of university registrar Madelyn G. Jones all coordinate an elaborate system for ensuring that the names announced correspond to the grads in line and the diplomas being given to them. But the finalized master
list of those actually graduating is not ready for printing until six o’clock the morning of commencement, the records having been verified the day before.
“For some it’s a close call,” Reynolds said.
Perhaps this is why, as commencement proceeds, the atmosphere of reserved dignity gives way to one of spontaneous festival. The crowd dissipates much as ice turns to water and then to steam, and the pockets of cheering and howling around the hall become more frequent with each passing name.
This year was no exception. Though President Reynolds requested that commencement be kept a serious occasion, by the time the “Ds” were crossing the stage, choruses of “Way to go Mike!” and “Praise the Lord!” had already begun.
There were 982 who ascended the platform — 982 who, one at a time, descended to the sound of a small celebration from somewhere in the audience. Some of the graduates seemed to skip with light feet as they returned to their seats, degrees in hand, as if a heavy burden had just rolled off their shoulders. Others waved their diplomas in the air as if to say, “I made it! I’m finished!”
After the cadence of names and school song, Dr. Reynolds unleashed the graduates on the Real World by leading them in a “Sic ’em Bears!” An earnest “Amen!” went up in response to the benediction, and the student recessional dissolved into a crowd of moms and dads with VCR cameras.
Outside, the tradition of smiles and photos began. Douglas A. Lemieux, Jr. posed for his first post-Baylor portrait, proudly displaying his crisp new BBA degree. The Littleton, Colorado, native was the first child, grandchild, and great-grandchild in his family to graduate from college.
“Even though he’s receiving the degree, we feel like we’re all receiving it since we’ve been there supporting him; we’ve been with him through the ups and the downs,” Mary, his mother, had said earlier. “It’s simply wonderful that we can experience it with him — his hope, his joy — it’s what every parent hopes for.”
With the shutters clicked, hugs, handshakes and high-fives exchanged, and the final uncertain-if-I’ll-see-you-again partings made, the graduates walked to their cars in this Triumph of Transition, one of life’s chapters complete, another just beginning.
