A few months ago my grandmother, Alice Lee Hedrick, sent my oldest daughter a special package containing a 100-year-old family mini-treasure trove.  In that package was this photograph of her own mother, Bobbie Collier Williams (my great-grandmother), in her cap and gown where she was valedictorian of her graduating class from Martha Washington College in 1910.  The package also contained her graduation cap (seen in the photo), the monogrammed lapel pin she wore (not in the photo), and the original typed script of her valedictory speech.

The world has changed immeasurably since 1910 as has the way in which our culture views women in society.  This post, however, isn’t really about any of that, although there’s plenty that could be said.  Instead, I’ll simply let the words of my great-grandmothers valedictory speech speak for themselves.  The speech itself is not earth-shattering.  It doesn’t contain any cryptic prophecies for the future, nor does it speak to any political issues of her day.  It’s simply a voice from the past; one that carries with it the same sorrow of partings and hopes for the future as from 100 years ago that students graduating still feel today.

I hope this voice from the past speaks to you today.  Please feel free to pass it on.

VALEDITORY TO CLASS OF ’10

Another year of our school-life is finished and many of us have come to-day for the last time. The occasion brings with it a comingled feeling of joy and sadness- joy because we have reached the goal for which we have so long been striving; sadness because of the severing of long and intimate companionships. Yet there is an end to all things “The shortest path and to the longest lane there comes and end”. The events of this day and of the past days are to be remembered and recalled with pleasure, perhaps with pride, when we have passed far down into the vale of years. As we hear the aged of to-day rehearse the scenes of their youth, so shall we revive the memories of our school when the battle of life had been fought, and we sit down to repose after the burden and the heat of the day are past. Then little incidents which seem no hardly worth telling will possess a deeper interest, and will linger longer and fondly in the imagination. To-day with its trials and it’s triumphs will be regarded as an epoch in the career of some of us; as a day worth remembering by all of us.

To you people of this historic old town, (more…)