Deaths dampen seminary graduation Bangor theological school mourns 2 students, faculty member at commencement

BANGOR – Bangor Theological Seminary’s graduation Friday was a more somber event than usual, dominated by the absence of the two students and a faculty member who have died since February.

Class valedictorian Thomas P. Cochrane, 43, of Wilton was killed in a car accident May 11. His daughter Maria accepted her father’s academic black hood trimmed in red velvet while his brother, Kenneth John Cochrane of Harvard, Mass., received his Master of Divinity diploma.

The teen-ager quietly wept as her father’s classmates were greeted with cheers and the clanging of hand bells at the afternoon ceremony held outside on the campus between Union and Hammond streets.

Norman S. Clark of Windham was awarded his master of divinity degree shortly before his death from cancer on Feb. 17 at the age of 48. Less than a month later, the seminary’s academic dean, the Rev. Dr. Oscar E. Remick, 69, died of cancer at his home in Trenton on March 25.

“This has been a year marked by sorrow,” said the Rev. Dr. William Imes, president of BTS, in his address to the 14 surviving graduates, their families and friends. “While acknowledging that this is a day of great happiness, we have had many moments of tears and travail.”

Imes presided over the first graduation ceremony since his appointment as president a little more than a year ago. He pointed out Friday that the class of 2002 began its final year of study with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which occurred the first week of classes.

Yet, as difficult as the past six months have been for the 183rd graduating class, students said that their experiences with loss, both as Americans in the wake of Sept. 11 and as classmates, friends and students would make them better ministers.

Susan Yaruta-Young, 50, of Blue Hill Falls, received her master of divinity degree Friday. A poet and former teacher, she said earlier this week that she was preparing a sermon about Clark when she heard of Remick’s death. She compared the losses to physical blows.

“It was whamo, whamo, whamo,” she said. “Just the loss of Norm – this big, generous guy who’d been a body builder who when he opened his arms, you felt like he could hug the whole world – was hard. He died the day before my 50th birthday.

“I was asked to preach in chapel after our break in March. I knew I was going to preach about Norm, when I got word that Oscar had died. We were recoiling from that shock – trying to put their deaths in perspective when on Mother’s Day – we got the news that Tom had been killed. The whole school was stunned.”

After graduation, Yaruta-Young said that she plans to continue her work at the Trinitarian Parish Church in Castine while seeking a position as a full-time minister with a United Church of Christ congregation. She observed that the losses at BTS her final year “will help me be a better minister.”

“We’ll know what it’s like when a high school or college student dies a week before graduation,” she said. “We’ll understand a little better because we’ve been there. Everything in my life has gone toward learning how I can listen to others and be a presence for someone else. Maybe, I’ll be a better presence because of Norm and Tom and Oscar’s deaths.”

Imes said that Clark’s classmates, led by Cochrane, decided to honor his memory by establishing a book scholarship for future students in his name. Clark’s father, the Rev. Winston E. Clark of Plymouth, Mass., donated to the seminary the small antique communion cup he’d planned to give his son on the day of his ordination to the ministry.