Talk and circumstance

Whoopi Goldberg, Meryl Streep, Newt Gingrich and Barbara Bush all have taken their turns — and their fees — as commencement speakers over the years at some of America’s most prestigious colleges and universities.

Although marching along with the other graduates clad in black robes and mortarboards, somehow they stand out because they’re, well, celebrities. While a school organist or string ensemble performs “Pomp and Circumstance” or some less whistleable tune, the honored guest may press the flesh, scribble an autograph, even blow a kiss before being seated on the dais.

Then the big moment arrives and everyone realizes why they’re who they are. Whether politicians or movie stars or some other name from another walk of life, they’re old hands at working the crowd with a pithy speech to mark a galvanizing event in many lives.

“My first voyage to find the Titanic failed,” commented underwater explorer Robert Ballard at a 1994 Maine Maritime Academy commencement. “The test is whether you pick yourself up after being knocked down.”

Give him high marks for taking a gargantuan subject down to a personal level and inspiring the graduates along the way.

Bill Cosby arose from a webbed lawn chair placed irreverently on a Colby College podium to touch an audience with his own wit and candor.

“Why are you here?” he asked in 1992. “To leave! That’s what it’s all about. … I will not wish you good luck. It’s silly. I will wish you perseverance and hard work.”

Novelist Stephen King was funny, and poignant, during a 1987 University of Maine ceremony. At one point he described the graduates’ time spent at his alma mater as not “the best days of your life,” but “meant to prepare you for the best days of your life.”

Former Sen. George Mitchell was wonderfully concise — about 10 minutes from start to finish — at last weekend’s UMaine convocation. The man who had just brokered a peace agreement in Northern Ireland advised the students to always tell the truth and do good for others.

More dignitaries, some known only to Mainers, will speak to more graduates this weekend and next, as another season of talk and circumstance draws to a close.

Graduates would do well to reflect on another ceremony held half a century ago at Husson College. In a simpler time when graduates applauded politely when the last diploma was passed out — no tossing of mortarboards into the air for them, school principal Chesley Husson would have been ashamed — the Rev. E. Charles Dartnell of Brewer spoke these stirring words in post-war 1948:

“As you face this glorious hour, I hope you face it with confidence in the subjects you have mastered, the disciplines you have accepted, but I covet for you an inner strength, a bulwark of spiritual power which will enable you with true confidence to face this day and age.”