The most interesting thing I saw on campus today was the preparation for tonight’s fireworks:
The guys could not have been more charming or more helpful–they gave me a pretty good tutorial on the technology of modern fireworks, which has thankfully come a long way since the days of lighting fuses with torches. I was also thankful that someone thought to move the site of the launch out to Founders Court from the quad (which always seemed like a dubious idea to me).
We don’t have very many images of commencement the other way around, that is, out on the front side of Lovett, as photographic discipline completely broke down after Dr. Lovett retired. Here’s a nice one I found recently, though, taken on June 5, 1955, before there was a lawn:
The second most interesting thing I saw on campus today was the color guard practicing for tomorrow’s plenary commencement. I was a bit concerned when they started but they got significantly better as I watched. They now have my full confidence:
Bonus: Sky Wonder Pyrotechnics rules.
If those are hedges in the foreground of the 1955 photo, I do not remember them being there a year later, when I matriculated in 1956 and parked my car in the lot on the front side of Lovertt. That lot was long gone by graduation in 1960, but (as previously noted), it rained on Commencement evening, and graduation was held in the gym. All was fair the next year, when I received my B. S. at Commencement in front of Lovett.
I was somewhere in that 1955 picture, waiting to get my MA certificate in nuclear physics.
When did fireworks become part of commencement?
It’s quite recent, four or five years maybe.
Friday night before, after the Presidential Concert (replaced by the Undergraduate Convocation a few years ago) for at least ten years.