Boston Latin School - Liber Actorum Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Experience That Is Latin School

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STUDENTES PRIMANI They are of all races, religions and colors; they come from all sections of the vast Greater Boston area; they study French, Russian, college-level chemistry, physics and mathematics; they will enter colleges all across Sharing The Unique America. Yet, there is one common denominator — all have shared the unique experience that is Latin School. 18

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To The Class Of 1964 . EHH HHK91 BRIAN McGUNIGLE President PRESIDENT ' S MESSAGE For the past four or six years, we have been a part of latin School. Now latin School is a part of us; we must uphold its reputation of excellence and its tradition of greatness. We are proud, not only to be members of the three hundred twenty -ninth graduating class of the oldest secondary school in our nation, but also to have been associated with fine instructors whom we admire and respect, and whose efforts in our behalf we are only beginning to appreciate. At latin School we have learned not only Latin, chemistry and mathematics, but the all-important lessons of integrity, loyalty, and courage. Although this school seemed cold and impersonal to us when we entered we now realize that it has been our guardian and protector. We have matured and are about to face our responsibilities in the adult world. It is now time to leave the shell. Yet we mark today not onlv an end, but a beginning. Our lives have barely begun; our intellectual development is really still to come. We have just started to ask the questions that will determine the course of our lives: Who are we? What are we? Where are we going? You cannot teach a man any- thing, Galileo once said. You can only help him to find it within himself. In essence, all education is a search for that something within oneself, and life itself is a process of educa- tion. Life is a continuous search for identity. Inherent in this search for identity is the enigmatic question of man ' s purpose and destiny. In the words of the late John F. Kennedy, This century could be the greatest in the history of mankind, hut it could also be the last. And thus today we do mark a very real beginning, the beginning of our personal connection with the struggle of all mankind to reach the ultimate and attain the destiny ordained for man by his Maker. The road will be long, the climb arduous, hut man will continue to look upward and reach greater heights. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes magnificent- ly expressed man ' s struggle and destiny in a speech shortly after the turn of the century: I think it not improbable that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand. And so beyond the vision of battling races and an impoverished earth I catch a dreaming glimpse of peace. The other day my dream was pictured to my mind. It was evening, and as I was walking homeward, to the west the sky was aflame with scarlet and crimson from the setting sun. Hut, like the note of downfall in Wagner ' s opera, below the skyline there came from little globes t he pallid discord of the electric lights. And I thought to myself the Gotterdammerung will end, and from those globes clustered like evil eggs will come the new masters of the skj. It is like the time in which we live. But then I remembered the faith that I partly have expressed, faith in a universe not measured by our fears, a universe that has thought and more than thought inside of it, and as I ga ed. after the sunset and above the electric lights there shone the stars. 20