Generations in the Bowl

2024 Millsaps College Commincement

My father was chairman of the board of trustees at Millsaps College for something like a hundred years. I don’t think that’s the exact number, but it’s pretty close. I used to open the mail with my father at an utterly unchristian time of the morning. It’s just about that time now. My father snipped the ends off envelopes like his father had done before him, and I opened them and distributed the contents into four neat piles. It’s been almost thirty years, but if you brought me a bag of company mail today, I could probably do it all again without a hitch. One day, as we opened the mail, my father put me in my place.

It was springtime in Mississippi, and the commencement celebration at Millsaps was approaching. As part of the ceremony, the chairman of the board gives a brief address to the assembled faculty, students, and parents before the president distributes sheepskin degrees to the candidates, painstakingly signed by himself and the board chairman in the weeks before. Daddy used to sign stacks of them on his desk after work hours while I made him a vodka and me a whiskey. It’s a Scottish tradition to drink with your father. One year, as he dug through the piles of degrees, he came to one and said,

“Don’t look.”
“Is it mine?” I asked.
“Dunno, I’m on the next one now. You can look again.” He said.

I have my degree, signed by my Dad and George Harmon, in its original leather presentation binder in my bookcase. I’ve thought many times that I should frame it. My wife insisted on it, nearly to the point of violence. I’m not sure why I haven’t done it. It’s an emotional response to something.

One day, as he snipped and I opened the mail, Daddy mentioned the upcoming commencement and his speech. Offhandedly, I asked, “Don’t you just give the same speech over and over every year?”

“Something like that.” He said.

A few hours later, when the normal people came to work, Daddy’s Amazonian secretary, named Rose Marie Brandon, delivered with a thump on my desk, a stack of seventeen neatly typed, stapled and foldered speeches, each was ten or fifteen pages, typed in the extra large font on her IBM Selectric Typewriter. She touched my shoulder and laughed. “When you finish reading these, your daddy said to bring you the rest.”

Good morning. Happy Mother’s Day. The sun’s barely trying to come over the horizon. I’m in my pajamas with an extra large cup of black coffee—maybe two. Fiest dog sits at my feet, and we’re writing. Again.

Yesterday, since I could not be in Oxford to see the girl-child named after my mother graduate, I went to Millsaps College's commencement ceremony in the Bowl instead. If a place can be a part of your DNA, the bowl is that for me. It even has my name on it, or at least my Uncle’s name, which is spelled exactly the same.

I like to go early and watch the thing assemble. David Woodward was holding court over his staff, who made their last breakfast for a few days before the summer session started. David and I laughed; between us, we’ve probably seen seventy or more Millsaps Graduations.

When I think of Millsaps, I think of David’s father, sitting on the sidelines of football games with my father and George Harmon, eating peanuts and deciding all our fates. When generations of students who came after me think of Millsaps, it will be of Chef Dave. That’s how it goes at Millsaps. Someone passes you the torch, then you pass the torch down, and then down, and then down again.

When men have known each other long enough, they begin each communication with, “You know, Billy Ray Taylor died last week?” “Oh man, did he really? I hate to see him go.” And, then, they tell stories loosely or not at all related to Billy Ray Taylor. Dave and I told a lot of stories I can’t tell y’all, but here’s one I can:

There was this girl from Baton Rouge who drank more than me. She’d made a goose egg on her GPA for two semesters in a row and was on academic probation. That third semester, she worked extra hard and produced another goose egg and a lot of empty bottles. George Harmon, then President of Dear Old Millsaps, invited her to return to Baton Rouge, permanently, without a Millsaps degree.

As my father, grandfather, and I opened the mail during the unchristian hours of the morning, we could hear the company phone ring over the intercom because we didn’t require the switchboard operator to show up for work until hours when decent people were awake.

Whoever was on the other end of the conversation, I could hear him shouting at my father. After a few tense moments, Daddy said, “I’d really advise you not to do that!” and then, apparently, the man hung up on him. When I asked what was up, Daddy said, “You know (name redacted)? That was her daddy. She got expelled, and now he’s gonna drive to Jackson and kick George Harmon’s ass. George Harmon was only forty-seven inches tall but easily the most athletic man I have ever known. He could easily lift more than I could on several machines at the downtown YMCA, which he would always prove to me whenever I saw him there.

(Name Redacted) was a tall but slovenly and pudgy girl. Her father was the same, but also bald and constantly smoking cigars. Imagining him in an effort to kick George Harmon’s ass, I said, “I bet he don’t”

In those days, I worked, but I was also a student. I had a class at 8:30 with Sue Whitt. 8:30 was an hour when Christian people were awake and not snipping the ends off envelopes. I had to adjust to “being around normal people” mode.

After class, I went to the grill for a coffee and an egg sandwich—not far, but two remodels before where Chef Dave and I were talking yesterday.

The KAs had taken custody of the table in front of the entry door, the Pikes further down, the Sigs closer to the counter, and the Chops toward the back. The girls navigated and negotiated their way between the Greek boys until they found which group they liked best and threw in with them. Sometimes, for life.

Anxious to tell the boys I drank with the news of what excitement the day may have in store, I said, “(name redacted’s) Dad is drunk and driving to Jackson to whip George Harmon’s ass!” I laughed, but nobody else did. Behind me, a voice said, “I bet he don’t.” Of course, George Harmon was standing in the doorway behind me. After that, I made an effort to sit facing the door because you never knew when George was gonna show up.

Nobody’s ass got kicked that day. I don’t think the guy ever made it to Jackson. There are a lot of places to stop and drink between Baton Rouge and Jackson.

Besides Millsaps, I’ve been to commencement ceremonies at Ole Miss, Mississippi State, LSU, and Tulane. Although it looks like there are a ton of people at Millsaps graduation, the difference between Millsaps and those other schools is that there’s a pretty good chance you’ll know, at least, most of the people there. I usually do. As Chef Dave and I were discussing moments before, Millsaps is a generational experience. Even if you’re the first person in your family to attend college, once you’re at Millsaps, you’ll know people who have been there since before Gandalf the Gray became Gandalf the white.

Going into the sunlight, the first person to greet me was Jim Page, who was wearing a suit jacket. I commented on how much I liked his shirt, and he said his wife dressed him. She probably did. Cindy shook my hand like I wouldn’t remember her. You do that when you’re old because sometimes we forget each other’s names.

I knew Jim and Cindy when we were students, and Jim was the most successful member ever of the Millsaps baseball team. I think he still is. Yesterday was an important day for Jim Page. His child, I believe his youngest son, was graduating from Millsaps. I really hope Jim will wait a while before retiring. I don’t know how we’ll do baseball without him.

It was a big day for multi-generational baseball at Millsaps. Mary Ranager, granddaughter of the legendary Tommy Ranager and a legend in Millsaps Soccer in her own right, earned her drab hood as part of the Millsaps Else School master’s program. You don’t ever want to tell a girl she looks like her grandfather, but she does. Her uncle Ken, too. There’s a quality around her eyes that makes me think of Ken so much. Ken and I were in the same pledge class. I miss him quite a lot. There are adventure stories about Ken you wouldn’t believe, but they’re all true.

Wayne Dowdy shook my hand. They say Wayne is almost eighty years old, but I don’t believe it. He had not one but two grandchildren who graduated from Millsaps yesterday. I didn’t mention Wayne in my essay about the Boys of Spring, but he was absolutely a Knight of Mississippi. In his day, Wayne very nearly defeated Trent Lott for John Stennis’s seat in Washington. When Ray Mabus was struggling to win his second term as governor, Wayne ran against him in the primary but lost. Ray then lost to Kirk Fordice, and I wish to hell he hadn’t. This business of Mississippi turning from moderate Republicans and Democrats to increasingly conservative Republicans has been distressing. Mississippi doesn’t have the best record of preserving the civil rights of the people who live here. Moderate politics tends to ameliorate that as our most effective shield agent for liberty. Wayne is not the only KA from Millsaps to run for governor, but I wish he’d been the one to win.

Although none of them were graduating, there were at least seven people named Sewell there. Charles Sewell was an early adopter of the idea that Millsaps should try to copy Harvard Business School and open its own MBA program. It wasn’t even called the Else School yet. That’s saying a lot since Charles worked for the bank where Millsaps didn’t keep its money. In those days, two large banks ran Mississippi. They were the banks where other banks kept their money. Charles Sewell was head of the mortgage division of one of them. As the Else School grew and Charles wanted to slow his life down a bit, he became our Executive in Residence at the Else school, offering perspective and guidance to generations of young people. A lot of people thought the Millsaps MBA program would be bankrupt in five years. It didn’t turn out that way. You’ll never win betting against George Harmon. There’s an award given by the Else School to one of its graduates every year named for Charles Sewell. It’s not easy to win.

Besides Pages and Dowdys and Rangers, a Booth and a Nicholas were graduating too. There’s a long history of people going from St. Andrews Episcopal Day School to Millsaps College. I played football with Sam and Chris Nicholas. Sam’s daughter Graduated yesterday, his youngest, I think. His father taught there before going out on his own. When I was at St. Andrews, Bearnard Booth’s grandfather was the first (and sometimes only) person to recognize that I might not be the lumbering idiot that I seemed to be. It took a while for that observation to become evident, but he was right all along.

When Lance Goss died, Millsaps struggled to reassemble the theater department. We had at least a decade of warning that it was coming, but nobody ever wanted to believe it could happen. One day, a water supply pike broke under the theater in the Christian Center and washed away the foundation. They called me to school late on a bitterly cold December night because Brent was in Utah. I don’t know what they expected me to do. I could bend light in the theater but I can’t control water. At one point that night, you could see the walls moving and hear our old lady theater groan in distress. I had a pretty good idea of what was coming after that. Not long after, Millsaps put the theater department in abeyance and condemned the theater part of the Christian Center. My mother was dying, my brother was dying, my wife was leaving, and now the theater was dying. When they announced there would be no more theater department, I closed the book on Millsaps and most other aspects of my life for over a decade.

Last year, when I was in rehab and starting to come back to life, Brent Lefavor called me. “They’re starting the theater department again. They’ve hired Sam Sparks!” He said. Still in rehab, I immediately started going back to Millsaps again. Life had returned to me, and it.

I was anxious to meet the new players; the first one I met was Lizzy Pelto. I told Sam to bring the new kids to lunch at Hal and Mal’s, and Lizzy came. Sitting between Lizzy and Erin, I listened to all the things Lizzy was doing for the theater. I smiled and said, “Old Erin, meet the new Erin.” Lizzy was our first new everything-kid. You can’t have theater without an everything kid.

Next, I met Jakob Myers-Heldt. Jakob was basically me. If you could light it or build it, Jakob was there. I whispered to Brent that Jakob was the new Walt. Brent knew what I meant. Jakob won the Frank Hanes award. For most of our kids, Frank is the theater ghost. For me, he was a person. A person and a theater ghost. You can be both.

The last of the new players I met was Patricia Syner. I’d seen her around, but she didn’t say much, so I didn’t know her much. Then I read where a paper she wrote for Anne McMaster won second place at a state-wide contest at Ole Miss—a paper on the 1931 film “Frankenstein.” “I have got to meet this kid!” I thought. Monsters are my thing. I’m not kidding. The only time I’ve been published in a national magazine, I was writing about King Kong. I was once interviewed by NPR about King Kong and other monsters, including Lake Placid, which was coming out that month.

I knew that yesterday, Lizzy, Jakob, and Patricia were walking, so I positioned myself so I could see the processing graduates. Lizzy was first. Wearing ginormous dark sunglasses, she was being just that little bit extra that a theater student should, then Jakob, then Patricia. The first class of “New Millsaps Players” was graduating.

The Founders Day Medal is the highest honor the college bestows on a graduate. It’s the most challenging achievement a Millsaps student can strive for. My cousin Ann won the Founder’s Day Medal around the time my family learned I couldn’t read (at least not normally). In my memory, no member of the Millsaps Players had ever been even remotely nominated for the Founder’s Day Medal. Yesterday, two of our three graduates—Jakob and Patricia — were nominated for the Founder’s Day Medal.

Millsaps's new tradition is letting the Founder’s Day Medal winner deliver the Commencement address. I like that better than trying to find somebody new to give a fake doctorate to every year. We were running out of candidates.

Delivering her comments, Patricia is a writer, like me, only much better and nicer. She wrote her address in a very personal and vulnerable way, making it especially worth listening to. When she began talking about her friends, she began to cry. I did, too. I don’t know what her future holds. For the time being, she’ll be working for the Margaret Walker Center and writing. My plan is to watch her star burn its way through the universe for as long as I can.

When I got home, I wanted to write something for my niece since I couldn’t be at her graduation. It ended up being mostly about my dad, which might have been appropriate because she had never met him and would never know anything but the stories. You should always tell your children the family stories. They last ever so much longer than human bodies.

Settling in with a café au lait that was mostly warm milk, I opened the internet after finishing my essay. The first thing I saw was a photograph of Lizzy and Jakob mugging back to back after graduation. I can’t imagine who took it since Lizzy mostly takes the photographs (she’s brilliant at that.) “Our first new babies.” I thought and typed, “I don’t know how we’ll do it without these two.” on Facebook. Lizzy typed back with all the reasons why we will do it without those two.

I think she missed my point, but maybe I missed hers too. The show must go on. There will be new Lizzies, just like there were new Erins. There’s a new Lance, just like there was a new Frank. Millsaps is about generations. It’s about making connections and then making room for new people again and again and again. Millsaps is full of ghosts. I like it that way.