It’s the season for graduation celebrations, and congratulations are due to all who kept their nose at the grindstone long enough to earn a sheepskin or certification. I recall my own high-school graduation week back in the day and consider it a lost opportunity for me and my classmates. And I swear to this day it wasn’t my fault.
It all began with a call to the principal’s office back in late April or early May 1977. By the last quarter of my senior year at Sacred Heart Academy, I was pretty hard to track down between vocational television and radio broadcasting class at Mt. Pleasant High School and literature and film classes at Central Michigan University. In fact, I think I only took two classes at SHA that spring — a required religion class as well as Michigan History.
But find me they did. Like Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, I needed a mission and for my sins they gave me one. My journey into the Heart of Darkness required that I procure a speaker for the annual award assembly because, apparently, the principle thought it a fitting task for a lowly student council president. I asked the principal what criteria I should use in my selection process — his response went along the lines of “somewhat successful, an inspirational speaker and preferably Catholic.” Well, okay then.
In those days before the internet we availed ourselves of a resource found in every home called the Yellow Pages whenever we required a specific service. I let my Walker fingers do the walking … nope, no inspirational thinkers Catholic or otherwise there. No downtown storefronts boasted discount rates on award-assembly speakers, either. Moreover, nobody advertised such services in the Daily Times News or the Buyers Guide.
I don’t remember if I actually asked Bill Diem, my Daily Times’ editor or kept his name as a backup just in case my eventual first choice backed out. I bet Bill would’ve been good, too. But I had let him down a month or so prior when I had to decline an interview with Foreigner. The band was in town to support their debut album as opening act for the Doobie Brothers. My Almost Famous moment was cut short because I was performing the leading role in a matinee of the school play that day. Yes, dear readers, I performed Horace Vandergelder in Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, but it was my co-star as Dolly Levi who stole the show.
Go big or go home, right? I got on the phone and called Mecosta long-distance. A place called Piety Hill, residence of the only other writer I knew at the time, Russell Kirk. His charming bride Annette answered and immediately accepted the invitation for her husband to speak pro bono as I was given no budget to hire an actually successful, inspirational and Catholic speaker.
I returned to school the following day to announce the fait accompli. My principal wasn’t impressed, mostly because he didn’t know who Russell Kirk was from Adam. Anticipating such a probability, I showed him a booklet on Russell and a copy of his Confessions of a Bohemian Tory.
I explained that Dr. Kirk was a nationally renowned newspaper and magazine columnist, and internationally recognized author of The Conservative Mind. The Philistine and presumably liberal principal said he’d ponder it. The following day he pulled the plug under the pretense the assembly already was too long. I had to call Annette Kirk to fire Russell the day before he was to speak. She was a peach about it, but my humiliation was palpable. Today, she laughs it off.
Sorry to my fellow SHA students. I tried. I really did.
Bruce Edward Walker (walker.editorial@gmail.com) is a Morning Sun columnist, contributor to The Federalist, creative-writing instructor, freelance writer, and host of the Acton Institute’s “Upstream” contemporary-culture podcast.