By The Revd. Dr. D. Stuart Dunnan

Sunday, May 23, 2021

What a pleasure it is to have a proper Commencement again, although 15 of this class are still with us virtually. This Commencement coincides with what we hope will be, to use a “Churchillian” phrase, the beginning of the end of our COVID journey. 

It has been a remarkable 14 months. We were virtual, then hybrid, and then hybrid with eventually three quarters of our students returning to campus, which all required great flexibility and effort on the part of our faculty. Virtual teaching was completely new to us and very challenging. I think it was a little easier for my younger colleagues than those closer to my age. Then hybrid teaching, which I am assured is a nightmare, and then our time on campus last spring as a community before we really knew how the virus spread, but safely sharing our meals and doing our work.  

And then we returned as a whole community with cohorting, distancing, masking, testing, and all that work in the fall, and stayed together on campus through Thanksgiving. (We've discovered, by the way, that the kitchen makes a terrific Thanksgiving dinner, so you might lose your Thanksgiving vacations for good.)  We then broke for Christmas and postponed our return, so returned to virtual.  Learning that lesson, we dropped our spring break so we could get to this point earlier in the year, all while following the COVID protocols. None of it was easy for the faculty, and they were incredibly conscientious and, frankly, brave to teach you and stay here with you both virtually and in person.

It has also been very difficult for our students, some sadly still virtual after 14 months. Many students made great sacrifices to return to campus, particularly those coming from abroad. Our Chinese students had to quarantine for two weeks in a third country in order to travel to campus. Others stayed, as Coco did, remaining in America through the summer, so that she could be here as Senior Prefect on campus this year. And these students also embraced all the COVID protocols. I had to explain to parents, sometimes daily, that they could not visit. You have no idea how difficult it is to tell parents that they cannot visit their children. That is how we had to function, and that was extremely hard on parents as well. 

But that is what the rules required us to do in order to deliver in-person learning for our students:  fewer breaks and no visits home until later in the year, no interscholastic sports until later in March, and none of our usual outings or activities. And you ate what you were served. The students had to act, sing, dance, and practice while social distancing and with masks on. I sang the hymns with the choir for Lessons and Carols, and it was brutal. I had no idea it was so hard. I lost my voice for about a week.  They did this all year. 

I shared with the sixth form a great truth that I will now share with all of you. Throughout this entire year they have never once complained to me. Not once. And I have never had a year when the sixth form did not complain to me. That is extraordinary. As parents know very well, adolescence is that time in life when we are wired to complain, so teenagers can be a little whiny at times, but not this year. Not at all. They have gained that greater gratitude and that better perspective.

Our staff is to be commended for their conscientious attention to our refectory and cleaning protocols, getting here early in the morning and doing all the extra work that they have had to do to keep the campus safe for all of us. And our administrators were constantly reacting, adapting, and planning. True to form, I fled to Maine for a couple of weeks this past summer, and Mr. Batson would call about every three days with a new plan, and I would say to him, “go sleep on it; everything will be different tomorrow.”  Inevitably, when we would form a plan, the rules would change, and we would have to come up with a new one. And everybody was expecting answers when we had really no answers to give them. So, I want to thank Mr. Batson, Ms. Sherman, Mr. Lachut, and Mr. Wivell especially for their administrative leadership, creativity, and support.

Finally, I would like to thank Mrs. Swaby, who arrived for her first year as School Nurse in the middle of a pandemic, and her excellent crew of nurses who have joined and helped her. Also, our thanks to all who helped us with planning and testing and then vaccinating in the County Health Department and at Meritus Medical Center.  Our thanks especially to Dr. Joshi and his excellent team. We had skilled support and expert advice as we responded to the pandemic.

So, the gifts of COVID, which I shared with the sixth form in Chapel, are these:

The first is humility, because the pandemic has forced us to acknowledge that we are not in charge of everything as we once thought that we were, especially here in America, where we are so blessed. And frankly, shame on us for thinking that we were. We are all of us, no matter how rich or how well educated, human beings, so mortal, which is why we need and believe in God, and why we need and believe in each other. God has made us this way to reveal his purpose and to build his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

The second is a better set of priorities to help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. Maybe playing that season can wait a year until it is safe to return to the court or the playing field. Maybe that other person is more vulnerable and in need than I am, so my “rights” are not as important as my obligations.

During this time of disappointment and challenge, we have discovered, I hope, a greater sense of gratitude and appreciation, and more empathy, so that we can respond more helpfully to the challenges of others, because the truth is that there are many people in our country and throughout the world who are much more vulnerable and at-risk than we are.

So, let us hold on to our COVID gifts as we return to “normal” next year and build a new and better future for all of us.

Today is the Feast of Pentecost in which the Church celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s gifts of courage and resilience to those who believe, and these are the gifts that we honor with the prizes that we will give today. For this is what the Saint James journey requires, preparing you for life. Because if you are going to grow successfully here for five, four, three, or two years, you need to learn how to make new friends and develop deeper friendships with people who are different from you. You also need to try new things and get out of your comfort zone, find new interests and passions in areas where you are not already experienced or successful. You need to fail, and you need to improve. You need to apologize, and you need to grow up.

Also at Pentecost, we celebrate the Church: that great company of faithful people with many languages and from many nations who come together to form the body of Christ active and visible in the world.  And again, you have had that experience here at school, as you have gathered here from all over the nation and the world, and you have come together even more closely this year as you have faced these new challenges. So, this is a remarkable class, refined in the fuller’s fire, and especially this group that has bonded here on campus. 

After the prefect vote, I always meet with the sixth form, and I explained to them the Annual Fund, which is how alumni, parents, past parents, and friends support us on an annual basis, allowing us to afford over a million dollars more in financial aid than we would otherwise be able to afford and also to pay for our more expensive programs like football, smaller AP and language classes, and the musical. I then asked if any of them could improve on my presentation, and true to form Jacob Dugas immediately got up and did a much better job than I did. It was wonderful, and then about ten other sixth formers spoke after him, all endorsing my call for gratitude and support: “I received that aid” or “my friends received that aid” or “this has been such a great experience, and I want to give to support it.” In 29 years, I have never experienced such a strong and enthusiastic response from a graduating class.

The classes of 1930 and 1931 experienced a terrible outbreak of flu when they were students at Saint James, and they always came to Alumni Weekend when I first arrived as headmaster. When they came, they would tell me the story of going to chapel on their own to pray for their classmate, Lucius Kellam, who was then dying in the Infirmary. Miraculously, while they were in chapel, his fever suddenly broke and he began to recover.  They never forgot that miracle, and it bonded them to Saint James and to each other forever.  You may have noticed that the auditorium in the Cotton Building was given by Lucius Kellam, who built the Kellam Bridge and Tunnel on the Virginia side of the Chesapeake Bay, so became himself a great leader for good in his part of the world and a grateful and generous alumnus. 

You now have that same opportunity to live like Lucius Kellam:  gratefully, purposefully, and generously.  I hope that you will.