Free Living History by Unknown

“What do you girls want?” To be fair to her, most of us had no idea. We were trapped between an outdated past and an uncharted future. We were often irreverent, cynical and selfrighteous in our assessments of adults and authority. So, when Eldie announced to President Adams that she represented a group of students who wanted a student speaker, the initial negative response was expected.
    Then Eldie upped the pressure by declaring that if the request was denied, she would personally lead an effort to stage a counter-commencement. And, she added, she was confident her grandfather would attend. When Eldie reported that both sides were dug in, I went to see President Adams in her little house down on the shore of Lake Waban.
    When I asked her, “What is the real objection?” she said, “It’s never been done.” I said, “Well, we could give it a try” She said, “We don’t know whom they are going to ask to speak.” I said, “Well, they asked me to speak.” She said, “I’ll think about it.”
    President Adams finally approved.
    My friends’ enthusiasm about my speaking worried me because I didn’t have a clue about what I could say that could fit our tumultuous four years at Wellesley and be a proper send-off into our unknown futures.
    During my junior and senior years, Johanna Branson and I lived in a large suite overlooking Lake Waban, on the third floor of Davis. I spent many hours sitting on my bed looking out the window at the still lake waters, worrying about everything from relationships to faith to antiwar protests. Now, as I thought about all that my friends and I had experienced since our parents dropped off such different girls four years before, I wondered how I could ever do justice to this time we shared. Luckily, my classmates started coming by the suite to leave favorite poems and sayings; wry takes on our shared journey; suggestions for dramatic gestures. Nancy “Anne” Scheibner, a serious religion major, wrote a long poem that captured the zeitgeist. I spent hours talking to people about what they wanted me to say and hours more making sense of the disparate and conflicting advice I received.
    I went out to dinner the night before graduation with a group of friends and their families and ran into Eldie Acheson and her family. When she introduced me to her grandfather, she told Dean Acheson, “This is the girl who’s going to speak tomorrow,” and he said, “I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say.” I felt nauseated. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to say, and I hurried back to my dorm to pull an allnighter―
    my last one in college.
    My parents were excited about seeing their daughter graduate, but my mother had been experiencing health problems. A doctor had prescribed blood thinners, and he advised her not to travel for a while. So, regrettably, she couldn’t come to my graduation, and my father wasn’t keen on coming alone.
    When I told my parents that I would be speaking, however, he decided he had to be there. And, in typical Hugh Rodham fashion, he flew to Boston late the night before, stayed out by the airport, took the MTA to campus, attended graduation, came to the Wellesley Inn for lunch with some of my friends and their families and then went right back home. All that mattered to me was that he made it to my graduation, which helped diminish the disappointment I felt over my mother’s absence. In many ways, this moment was as much hers as mine.
    The morning of our graduation, May 31, 1969, was a perfect New England day. We gathered in the Academic Quadrangle for the commencement ceremony on the lawn between the library and the chapel. President Adams asked me what I was going to say, and I told her it was still percolating. She introduced me to Senator Edward Brooke, our official commencement speaker and the Senate’s only African American member, for whom I had campaigned in 1966 when I was still a Young Republican. After staying up all night