On Saturday, June 3, 1972, the Commencement Exercises for the Saint Ignatius College Preparatory Class of 1972 were held at Saint Ignatius Church on the campus of the University of San Francisco. 271 young men received a diploma that day declaring that we had successfully completed the requirements for graduation from the renowned Jesuit institution — some more successfully than others. On the same day, at that same ceremony, 24 gentlemen were awarded their Golden Diploma, three of them posthumously. A Golden Diploma is presented to alumni in recognition of the 50th anniversary of their graduation.
On Saturday, May 28, 2022, the Commencement Exercises for the Saint Ignatius College Preparatory Class of 2022 will be held. More than 350 young men and women will receive a diploma that day, a number which reflects the significant increase in enrollment since the school began admitting women in 1989. There will, however, be no Golden Diplomas awarded on that day. Logistically speaking, it is simply not a possibility.
Plans have been made for a weekend of events in early April to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Class of ’72. I’ve seen some of the email correspondence regarding these events. Of the 271 guys who graduated in June 1972, approximately 75-100 are expected to participate. I read that the Alumni Office at the school has no contact information for about 100 of my former classmates, and that 30 members of our class are deceased. This leaves only about 40 guys unaccounted for.
While I am very much looking forward to the reunion events, it is a bit disconcerting for me to recall that on June 3, 1972, as I watched the 21 members of the Class of 1922 gingerly walk up to the sanctuary to receive their Golden Diploma, I was thinking about how incredibly old the men were and how amazing it was that they were still alive! Well,… Needless to say, I have a very different perspective on this matter now.
One might be tempted to ask, “How could this have happened? How could fifty years have passed so quickly?” Of course, there are no answers to these questions. It did, and they have. But now I’m amazed at how incredibly young the Golden Diploma recipients will be this year!
I really don’t know what to expect when I arrive for the reunion events. I am confident there will be a number of classmates I will recognize, and, no doubt, there will be those who will look totally unfamiliar to me. I’m guessing there will also be a few who look significantly older than the rest of us, and I know of at least one classmate who still looks much as he did the day we graduated fifty years ago. There might even be a few guys who have been working out for the past year so that they’ll be physically fit and look good at the reunion, and then… there’s the rest of us. What you see is what you get!
Seriously, though, I am grateful for the opportunity to attend the Golden Diploma reunion events in April. I may lack many of the material status items one might use to determine one’s success in life today, but I’m okay with that, too. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. The past fifty years have been amazingly, imperfectly, delightfully, and surprisingly gratifying.
