It's Graduation Time

 

Journal Opinion, June 6, 2026

 The news is filled with local high school graduation activities. While ceremonies remain mostly traditional, there have been changes over the years.

This column reviews the history of these activities in the period prior to 1980. It deals with topics ranging from baccalaureate, class night, and graduation ceremonies to class trips, yearbooks, and alumni reunions.

Groton, Newbury, Bradford, Thetford, Woodsville, and Orford all had high schools included in this column.  Each topic will feature stories from some, but not all schools.  

The baccalaureate is one graduation ceremony that was once far more prominent than it is today. Baccalaureate services were held in church on the Sunday before graduation. With prayers and sermons, they were meant to offer graduates reflection and encouragement.

In 1892, the service for Newbury High graduates was the first mentioned in local newspapers. Thetford Academy, Wells River High, and Bradford Academy followed the practice in the 1890s.

Union services combined the Protestant churches and sometimes replaced the normal Sunday morning services.

While usually held in a church sanctuary, Wells River sometimes held their service in the Village Hall whereas Woodsville used the Opera House. 

Until 1963, Bradford Academy’s Protestant graduates met for one service, while Catholic graduates attended a mass at their local church.

The class of 1964 saw that as divisive and petitioned to hold an interfaith service. On June 7, an ecumenical observance was held in the school’s auditorium. Other local schools began to hold similar services with the clergy and graduates from all local churches.

In response to Supreme Court restrictions on organized prayer in public schools, high schools began to back away from organizing the services, leaving that to clergy and parents.

While worship was one way to commemorate graduation within the community, the senior trip took graduates farther afield. It was a highlight of the graduation season.

 In 1905, the Bradford class took a trip to Canada in place of an extended graduation week. The downsized ceremonies meant that “graduation will lose half its horror.”

As early as 1908, local students used the occasion to visit Washington, D.C., New York City, Montreal, and Boston. Until the 1950s, trips to these locations were taken by train.  

The World’s Fair was an attraction that could not be missed. In 1939, Newbury seniors attended the NY World’s Fair and, in 1964, Haverhill High seniors went to the NY World’s Fair.

In 1967, Bradford Academy’s senior class convinced the school board to make an exception to the ban on overnight class trips so they could attend Montreal’s Expo67. 

Many trips were for just a  single day  to locations both near and far. Lake Morey, Ausable Chasm, and Lake Willoughby were locations visited by local seniors.

 For several years in the 1960s, Bradford’s Senior Class spent a very long day in Boston. Highlights included the amusement park at Nantasket Beach and a ball game at Fenway Park. 

Students held food sales and dances to raise the funds for these trips. The support of their communities made the trips possible. In 1967, the last class to graduate from Groton High voted to forego a class trip and donate the $440 to the Ricker Memorial Scholarship Fund instead.

For many, formal senior pictures were the only time they had professional portraits taken. They became keepsakes that decorated their family’s living room walls. 

In March 1889, the five members of the Thetford Academy senior class went by train to Lebanon for their pictures. In 1895, a studio opened in North Haverhill to offer class photos.

As these portraits were featured in the annual yearbook and often doubled as Christmas gifts, pictures were taken in the fall. Local high schools used photographers from studios such as Vantine, Pierce, and Morris.

 In the 1950s, hand-tinting added natural tones to black-and-white images. On picture day in the fall of 1959, my best friend at Orford High forgot his suit coat and tie. He wore mine and the studio changed the tint to distinguish his photo from mine.

These senior pictures were a major part of the annual yearbook. Generally, a senior class production, work on the “annual” began in the fall for distribution at graduation time.

Yearbooks began appearing in Vermont high schools in the 1920s. The earliest local books were soft-covered booklets. By the 1950s, hard-covered yearbooks had been expanded into pictorial histories of the school’s year.

The studios that took senior photos also took group photos of underclassmen, clubs, sports teams, and faculty, and candid shots of major school events. 

Contacts were made with printing companies such as Jostens of Boston.  They offered professional advice and set deadlines to ensure timely production.  The cost of their services was covered by yearbook sales and community patrons.

 Orford’s Flumine and Woodsville’s Engineer were yearbook titles for many years. Bradford called their book The Yearling until The Admiral was adopted in 1953. Newbury High used The Livewire until at least 1930, then used The Rocket and The Oxbow as titles.

Other titles include Nutcracker (1966) Groton High, Chatterbox (1964) Well River High and The Bath Union Spirit, Bath High (1940).

As a teacher, one could not expect to have students’ attention on the day yearbooks were distributed. Students shared autographs and reactions to the contents. One of the highlights was the dedication to a beloved staff member or to a classmate who had passed away.   

Another event of graduation week was class day or class night. The first newspaper notice was in June 1897 when Thetford Academy held its class day exercises in Academy Hall.

Whether held indoors or out, the class day activities initially were generally formal. Student speakers read prepared essays, class wills, and class history. They were accompanied by music from the school orchestra and glee club.

The 1909 BA’s class day was typical of the day. Held on a decorated stage, it included two operettas, a presentation of class gifts, the unveiling of a large bust of Lincoln and a student speaker on the topic “The Study of Electricity.”

By the 1930s, lighter tones began to be included.  “Fun will reign supreme” was the prediction for Newbury’s 1935 class day. In 1951, Orford’s event included class gifts, awards, and the selection of Frances Pease as “the best man of the year” chosen by the Future Homemakers of America girls.

From then on “the lighter aspects of commencement were given free play” in class day or night events. While the school used the opportunity to present scholastic and athletic awards to members of all classes, the graduating class was at the center of the program and did so with humor.

The report of the Bradford class night in 1969 described “the night of fun before settling down to the serious occasion of graduation.” Their skits were based on the television show “Laugh-In.”  

As class night became a product of the students alone, schools began to hold “last assemblies” as opportunities to grant awards.  

Students also held senior proms or promenades between 1908 and 1936. The BA dances were held on the third floor of the Academy, in the Opera Hall and, then in 1936, in the new gymnasium.  The 1923 Wells River event was held in the Village Hall and the 1927 Thetford occasion was in the Grange Hall.

The high point of commencement season for high school seniors was the graduation exercises. It was usually held in the community’s largest auditorium, with tickets distributed to family members.

The particulars of the graduation event were established in each high school. It usually included a stage decorated with the school colors and perhaps the class motto. Dressed in caps and gowns, the graduates, led by a class marshal, processed to the measured step of “Pomp and Circumstance.” 

Until the late 1960s, the program opened with a prayer by a local minister. After musical selections, student speakers were often followed by a guest speaker. Awards and scholarships were followed by the actual presentation of diplomas.

This most “characteristic American ceremony” was a major event in each high school community and was the end of years of efforts by both parents and graduates. Here are samples of newspaper coverage.   

The first graduation for Wells River High was in 1892, and the last was held in 1967 after 93 years.

In 1919, BA diplomas were granted to two Bradford soldiers who had left school in 1917 and served on the Western Front in France with the Yankee Division.

The valedictorian of Newbury’s Class of 1951 told me that there were four girls and five boys dressed in green and gold gowns and that the ceremony was very traditional.

When the 20 members of the Orford Class of 1960 stepped onto the stage in their blue and white gowns, they were what was left of a freshman class of about 38.

Knowing what the weather was like in June, some local high schools took the chance of having an outdoor graduation. BA waited from 1905 until 1967 for that.

In response to the court’s decision about a prayer at graduation, one senior asked, “Would it be alright to have a prayer, if we didn’t mean it?”

Before the introduction of Project Graduations in the late 1980s, there was always the possibility that unsupervised post-graduation parties could lead to tragedy. The morning after “no new was good news” 

After the last graduation event, alumni typically held their annual reunion. In July 1894, the alumni of Thetford Academy gathered and “old acquaintances were renewed.”

As best I can determine from newspaper coverage, the other local high school alumni associations were established as follows:  Wells River 1897, Bradford 1901, Groton 1919, Woodsville 1920, Haverhill 1926, and Orford 1936. 

When Bradford Academy’s first reunion was held at Hotel Low with 88 alumni, it was “a splendid success in every way.”

A banquet was the main feature of alumni reunions. In Bradford, banquets were held in the Congregational Church, the Armory, and at Oxbow High. Wells River used the adjacent church parlor and then the Happy Hour Restaurant. Orford used inns on Lake Morey and Woodsville gathered at Well River’s Hale’s Tavern and Bath’s Colonial Inn.

 Classes celebrating significant anniversaries tended to bring larger attendance. A business meeting, a class rollcall, special speakers, recognition of members who have passed away, and presentation of gifts were part of the program. Informal sharing of memories was important.

The meeting included the singing of the school song. “Fair Thetford” and “Fair BA” were two examples, with older alumni singing the songs from memory and younger ones sometimes looking a bit perplexed. Several groups added a dance to close the evening.

Baseball and basketball games between alumni and high school teams were annual events. In 1927, the annual baseball game between the two teams of Haverhill Academy ended in a 9-8 victory for the alumni men. In 1931, the annual contest led to a tie between the BA alumni and the boys’ baseball team. The 1949 BA Alumni basketball game featured alumni stars John Pierson, Ezra Eastman and Sonny Kingsbury, who led their team to a 54-49 victory.  

About 1952, the annual Woodsville basketball games were expanded to include a girls’ game.  About the same time, Woodsville added an alumni softball contest. In 1967, Orford held a golf tournament at Bonnie Oakes’ golf course.

Awarding scholarships to their school’s graduating class was a major activity of alumni associations. As early as the 1960s, the Thetford Alumni held a Christmas Craft show to raise scholarship funds. In 1981, Orford alumni held a Christmas Show and Sale. Annually, groups ask for direct monetary donations for their scholarship fund.

Groups also raised funds to replace, repair, and expand the high school facilities. The Haverhill group supported and improved the Alumni Hall. Bradford alumni make annual contributions to a BA restoration fund.

Groton High, Bradford Academy, Wells River High, Orford High, and Newbury High no longer have graduates to add to their alumni rosters. Realizing the long-range impact on their associations, several have made amends to their membership by opening it to individuals who attended but did not graduate.

When Oxbow opened in 1971, Newbury alumni included Oxbow’s Newbury students in their annual meetings. OHS alumni merged with the graduates of Rivendell Academy. Bradford included those students who had started at the Academy and then transferred to Oxbow.  In the early 1990s, a short-lived Oxbow Alumni Association began.

Having attended many alumni meetings in both Orford and Bradford, I know the fond sharing of memories of school days of long ago is a tradition to be treasured.  I hope that this column will help readers recall their own graduation traditions.