By Sharon Snyder Los Alamos Historical Society In this time of disrupted events, including the graduation ceremony for the Los Alamos High School Class of 2020, I chose to do this column on Graduation Canyon to coincide with a time when many teens in our town had looked forward to wearing caps and gowns to their ceremony. Fate handed them a disappointment, but commencement is more than the celebration. The first graduations on the Pajarito Plateau were held in the early 1920s as the Los Alamos Ranch School began to send some of its young men off to college. Not all of the boys who came to the school had intentions of graduating here. Some families sent their sons for a year or two of “toughening up” to gain stamina, in some cases because the boys had been ill and needed the fresh mountain air and exercise to improve their health. The ranch school opened in 1917, and in 1921 it held its first graduation for two boys—Bill Rose of Santa Fe and Wallace Kieselhorst of St. Louis. The 1921 ceremony was held in “a rock amphitheater, pillared with swaying, majestic
pines,” as the Santa Fe New Mexican reported, a setting that is still known today as Graduation Canyon. Dressed in the uniforms of Boy Scout Troop 22, the students rode their horses into the canyon, with the lead riders carrying the Stars and Stripes and the Los Alamos Ranch School flag. New Mexico Gov. Merritt C. Mechem spoke at that first ceremony that was attended by approximately 100 guests seated on boulders or “Indian blankets spread on the ground.” There were young men from nearby pueblos in their colorful native dress, singing to drumbeats, and “a brown-robed Franciscan with hands uplifted in invocation before the silent throng.” The school’s founder, Ashley Pond Jr., handed out the diplomas, and the flair of this first outdoor ceremony set the pattern for the next eight years until Fuller Lodge was opened and the graduations were then held on the east portal. There were no graduates in 1922, so the next ceremony in the canyon was in 1923 when three boys graduated—George T. May III of Chicago, Earl Kieselhorst of St. Louis, and Robert Lewis of New York. The proceedings were much as they had been in 1921, with the exception of the commencement speaker. That year, Ashley Pond Jr. spoke to the boys and their guests, saying, “Keep your sense of values straight, boys. The world is full of selfishness, and there are strenuous times ahead of you. Follow the Scout Ideal of a good turn daily and then double and triple it. Don’t aim at being able to brag about mere business and commercial success: lend a helping hand and gauge your success by what you do for your fellow man.” George T. May Jr, father of a 1923 graduate, shared inspiring words as well, noting that “no boy can live under the honor system which prevails at Los Alamos without acquiring a basis of honorable character that means more to him than fine gold.” Returning to thoughts of the Class of 2020, you are going forth into a difficult time, one that has no precedent in recent history, but you have been prepared for the future in one of the best public school systems in our country. You are capable of wonderful contributions in return, and those contributions many of you will make to our nation and the world. The words of George May Jr. in 1923 were delivered to young men, but they apply to us all, male and female. Congratulations, Class of 2020, from a member of the Los Alamos High School Class of 1965. You didn’t have a commencement ceremony, but you go forth with all that you’ve learned and the friendships you’ve made. Those are the important things, and they last a lifetime.
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