A rainy graduation night

Middletown's Mercy High does it just right

MIDDLETOWN, CT. — Caitlyn Elizabeth Yuris took a few quick steps, about ten by my count, then extended a hand to greet the unusually tall Bishop of Norwich Richard Reidy, who commanded the center of the stage, resplendent in his bright red outfit and Bishop’s four-wing Biretta cap (I looked it up) which probably made him close to seven-feet tall. She approached him bravely and smiled as he handed her the night’s final diploma.

We were at last at the end of the alphabet, the finale of the 2025 Graduation Diploma hand-out portion of the ceremony and Yuris, the last of 100-plus Mercy High School graduates, all of whom were clad in immaculate white gowns and white graduation caps, happily smiled and took a single step — but without her hard-won diploma.

The Bishop quickly extended the diploma to her, she took it with a broad smile and a soft chuckle rippled through the auditorium. It was about the only misstep on a coldly rotten rainy night where another well-orchestrated Mercy graduation ceremony ran without a hitch. Well, flawless except for the guy who yelled out “Jordan” in mid-ceremony when we had been cautioned that it was a longstanding Mercy tradition that parents, friends, relatives, etc. kept their traps shut until ALL of the diplomas had been handed out. But the outburst didn’t hurt anybody, and some found it encouraging to see a bit of rebellion on such a well-structured evening. We started a country that way, after all, right?

Rain wouldn’t let this be the case at Mercy High in Middletown, but the spirit was there.

It was such a mean-spirited, freezing cold night, you would have thought The Maker could have conjured up something a little more suitable for a bunch of smart and snappy young women who were wrapping up a stellar four-year academic run through the gauntlet of a classy but challenging Catholic high school, a place with deep tradition, high standards and even higher expectations.

I was there to celebrate the graduation of my great niece Sarina Harger who is the daughter of my wife’s niece or something like that. She IS a great niece, regardless, and I was delighted to see her look so jubilant (uncharacteristic for her wryly saturnine spirit) as she walked down the aisle, waving to us as if she hadn’t seen us in years.

Though I didn’t know a soul in the joint except Sarina and her family, I’ve been to or been part of enough graduations in my day to know a good one when I see one. When I saw the entire graduating class leap spontaneously to their feet to celebrate the announced retirement of a long-time teacher, well, that says more about the school than is obvious to those who have never spent a day in a classroom with teenage girls.

They are, or were, in my case, often a different person depending on what period they happened to wander into your classroom; sometimes charming, sometimes churlish, sometimes in a different place that didn’t seem to be where the rest of the class was. To teach a crowd like that, you had to be light on your feet, go with the flow, smile, adapt, think quickly.

At Mercy, you got the impression that sort of thing was frowned upon and despite the awful weather outside, there was a sense that every single one of these young women had genuinely accomplished something and the weather was of no concern. In these difficult times, it was an uplifting experience to see and hear from this wave of these young women, so accomplished and to hear them, nowhere near close to be being done. We need them.

In my teaching days, we often would bemoan “this crop of kids” and wondered what sort of impact they would have on our world. Had you been in the Mercy High auditorium the other night, there were no such concerns but rather, a sense of something great coming, just around the bend, off in the not-too-distant future.

The school’s President Alissa DeJonge, a Mercy graduate in ‘95, (a President I would have voted for, incidentally) offered a moving address, talking about what she found in an inspiring proliferation of sticky notes that apparently were spread all over the halls during Class Night, I think she said. Those messages “You’re worth it” or “You can do it” or “God is in you” and so many others showed a unity, a genuine sense of the value of community, something that seems to have vanished in these turbulent, divisive days. This is the world they’re headed for.

Of course, Mercy is in a bubble, an expensive one that at, but as an old guy long past my graduation days, it was touching — and important, I think — to see this kind of thing happening. There was no high falutin’ and often fake talk about changing the world in any of the Valdedictory or Salutatory speeches. Instead, the talks focused on community and friendship, lessons learned and love in the most Christian of ways.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but hey, seeing a hundred whipsmart young women ready to dash out into a cold, rainy and not particularly welcoming world on a nasty night in May 2025, it was the kind of thing that gives a man hope. Just the kind of thing a country needs, don’t ya think?

Congrats, Sarina! Happy I was there to share it.