In May of 1983, I graduated from Vermont Academy. It was also that spring when the long running television series M*A*S*H would air its final episode. I had watched M*A*S*H from a distance over the previous decade. I had seen enough to more or less know the characters and the situation. I wouldn’t consider myself a true fan of the show. I would be in a year but while I was at the Academy, TV was not part of my daily life. The series ending must have been a big enough event because the school had made arrangements for it to be accessible to us. We all seemed to be there watching it.
I had been going to school in Vermont for 6 years. Two at Bellows Falls Middle School and Four at Vermont Academy. In a small way it felt like Hogwarts must have felt to Harry Potter. I didn’t live with oppresive Dursleys at home but it certainly was a more restrictive environment in the city. Here in Vermont I was basically free to go as far as my bike would take me. With thousands of acres of forested mountains and rivers to explore. I loved being a part of it very much.
There is a particular feeling that I would get at the very end of each school year. I would complete my last final exam then walk out of Fuller Hall into the heart of the campus. All around me the end of the school year was apparent. Some of the kids were already packing up. Some kids were already gone. I’d stand there in a conflict of feelings. I was glad to done with another year of classes and looking forward to a summer vacation but at the sime time I didn’t want school to end because it meant that I wouldn’t see my friends again until September. It’s not that I didn’t like going home, but there I really didn’t know anybody any more and I wasn’t able to do much even if I had maintained contact.
Senior year was a bit different on so many levels. Like M*A*S*H, we were no longer needed here and this core group of people that I had been around for 4 years was disbanding. Living on campus and sharing all your meals with the same people year after year makes you closer. The second big change was that 2 of my classmates died the weekend before finals week. It was a tragic accident while tubing on a local river. That Saturday night it seemed like the power was out on campus. Everything was still and quite as people gathered together to cry in the dark. The next day, the headmaster announced that finals would be cancelled and we were dismissed until commencement the following weekend.
The entire school packed the little church in the village. Somebody speaking to the congregation said “Many feel that Eric and Randy died too young but they lived an entire lifetime” It was an odd thought but true. They lived their entire lives, it just wasn’t as long as most. After the service Adam and I took off to Snafu Hollow to try to think about something else.
Like M*A*S*H, we would all be leaving this campus that we called home for so long. Some went home before us. some never made it home again. Since finals didn’t happen, I didn’t experience that final conflict of emotions. It was probably for the best as that time there would be no September to look forward to.