The names rolled over Hearn Plaza like a chorus (I won’t say “like thunder” because rain clouds had been threatening all morning, but held off to the end.) (In one of my favorite books– her autobiographical essays, “One Writer’s Beginnings” - she described how she had learned to listen at home, enjoying the sounds of clocks striking and of her parents’ talking softly after the children had been put to bed.) I was grateful that she had taught me to enjoy more intensely a familiar ceremony. She wanted to stay because she loved hearing all the names as they were called out, savoring the sound of each one.Īnd so as the names of this year’s graduates were read, I followed along in the program to see where they were from, as Miss Welty had done.
In her life she had already sat through 30 such ceremonies at other schools, and one would have thought that she might like to say ”thank you” and travel back home to Jackson, Miss. In 1984, when Miss Welty came to Wake Forest University to receive an honorary degree, she declined a suggestion that afterwards she might like to leave the stage while the ceremony went on for another hour or so. For Commencement 2013, as Ed and I sat waiting for the names of new graduates to be read to the shouts from their families, I smiled remembering Miss Eudora Welty.
0 kommentar(er)
