Who goes to college commencement ceremonies? Regularly, probably only the faculty and senior administrators. Once in a lifetime,the graduates, of course.  And let’s not forget their admiring parents, family and friends.

My wife Mary and I fell into that latter category May 18th [1997] when we went to Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana for the150th Annual Commencement of that Roman Catholic college for women. Our young niece Miss Kimiya Fatima Varzi (better known simply as “Kim”) received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communication. The ambience was glorious: outdoors in full sunshine, the stately academic processions, the honorary doctorates given (one to Dr. Audrey Evans, pediatric cancer therapist and founder of Ronald McDonald House Charities), a tour of Kim’s dorm, elegant as a London club in the days of Sherlock Holmes, Kim’s excited friends, the crowds, the music, the refreshments. And one never to be forgotten commencement address by U.S. Representative Anne Meagher Northup from Louisville, Kentucky.

Kim and Anne: this column is for you and for all the other “belles of Saint Mary’s,” not forgetting the Sisters of the Holy Cross and all the teachers. 

Anne Northup was awarded that day the Degree of Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa.  Her citation concluded, 

Her great grandmother had boarded at Saint Mary’s during the Civil War. Mrs. Northup’s mother is an alumna, as is one of her daughters and as are seven of her nine sisters. Her younger sister, Mary T. Meagher, won three Olympic gold medals in swimming and still holds several world’s records. Representative Northup, in her commencement address, told how then College President Sister Madeleva 

On her first day at St. Mary’s in 1966 she met her future husband Robert Wood (“Woody”) Northup, a Notre Dame student, of course. (Is it a 150 year old ritual: the boys from Notre Dame walking across the highway to Saint Mary’s to look over the incoming freshmen for future wives?).  Mrs Northup said, 

She and her small-businessman husband Woody have four children of their own and two adopted minority children. Mrs Northup has been actively doing politics for more than 30 years. She first ran for and won public office in a special election in 1987 to fill a vacancy in the Kentucky House of Representatives.  She was then re-elected four times, twice without opposition. Last January [1997] she took her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, the first woman from Kentucky to do so in more than 60 years. She serves on the Appropriations Committee and on the District of Columbia Subcommittee chaired by our own Charles H. Taylor of Brevard, NC.

Some other lines stay with me from her commencement address:

Mrs Northup encouraged the graduates to take chances and not to fear failure. 

Our niece, Kim Varzi, did not wait long to activate the mission and the spirit of Saint Mary’s College. On June 15th Kim arrived in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa to teach mathematics in French as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Kim lives in a Detroit suburb. A couple of weeks after her graduation Mary and I drove her across the Detroit River to Windsor, Canada for a farewell lunch and to buy a French New Testament as one more graduation gift. Kim is taking her risks and making her difference.

I do not go out of my way to attend college commencements. But I am glad I went to Saint Mary’s 150th. The world is already  hearing from  the young women who graduated that day. Nor will it  surprise me  if we all hear many good things in years to come of Doctor (Honoris Causa) Anne Meagher Northup and all the other “belles of Saint Mary’s.” Indeed, in the words of Anne Northup,

for Asheville TRIBUNE