Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Eighteen

I am writing this on April 30, 2018. Tomorrow is the first day of May. My mind goes back tonight to May 27, 1983, the day I graduated from Horace Maynard High School thirty-five years ago.
Horace Maynard High School was located in the same building currently used as Horace Maynard Middle School. Our actual graduation week began with a tradition that each boy have a girl to “walk down the aisle” at the occasion. Anyone who knows me can tell that I was not “ladies’ first choice” back then. I was liked well enough and considered smart, but I had very few close friends and most of them were male. Few girls would have dreamed of me except in a nightmare. Nevertheless, I worked up my nerve and asked Linda Barnes if she would walk with me. She said, “I don’t care,” which meant she would not mind to do so, and I always appreciated her for being a considerate friend.
The first occasion for “the walk” was the Baccalaureate service held in the high school auditorium the Sunday immediately preceding graduation. This was an occasion for a local minister to deliver a sermon and pronounce a blessing upon the graduating class. Not many of these services are conducted in present times due to the effects of liberality that has minimized the importance of Christianity in our nation. I see no evidence from any of my classmates with which I still have contact that it hurt us in the least.
The following Friday our class graduated on the football field. The stage was a flatbed trailer loaned by the L. D. Monroe family. The stage was situated so the sun was setting behind the platform. This made for a pretty sunset on that bright day to seal the serenity of the occasion, though it was hard for a time to focus on the speakers as we squinted to block out the piercing evening sun.
Joseph F. Day was the principal of Horace Maynard High School. May 27, 1983 began for our senior class with a graduation practice. Joe Day told us in “flat-out” terms, “When you walk across this stage, you will be handed a blank diploma cover. If you want the diploma that goes inside, you will conduct yourselves appropriately.”
Thirty-five years is a long time, and while this may not be an exact quote, trust me, the meaning is intact. I could not help but be reminded of Mr. Day’s opening day speech to the entire student body when I entered Horace Maynard as an eighth grader in 1978, “If a teacher brings you to my office for discipline, the teacher is right and you are wrong.” There may have been a lot of muttering and booing, but the message was clear—we inmates would never control the asylum!
You are not graduated until you have turned in your cap and gown, returned all library books, and paid all fees. You are still a student of this school until that time, and I can and will hold your diploma as a disciplinary measure if needed.” As my former fourth grade teacher and later high school substitute said, “Mr. Day had order.”
I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the 2018 graduating class of Union County High School voted to graduate on the high school football field. It is a risk to graduate in the outdoors, as it is hard to predict what the weather will be. I wish for the Union County High School Graduating Class of 2018 a beautiful day just as we had in 1983. If God gives me health and strength, I plan to be there. As our present seniors graduate, a part of me will return in fond memory to another football field just a little way up the road, in front of another school building, where my fellow classmates and I began our journey of life.
My fondest wish for you all is that your journey may be as rewarding as mine. May you never forget where you come from and those who sacrificed so much to give you your start in life.