Spaulding High School - Our Echo Yearbook (Barre, VT)

Page 6 text:

THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON TO THE 1969 GRADUATING CLASS SPAULDING HIGH SCHOOL This is a day when congratulations are in order not only to the graduates but to the parents, teachers, and administrators whose efforts have helped to make this achievement possible. I extend my heartiest congratulations to all of you. At a time when there is much talk about the differences between the generations, I think it is useful to remark upon a similarity between your graduating class of 1969 and my graduating class of 1930. Your high school years have been historic ones. When you entered high school, man was making his elementary steps into space. In your senior year, three brave Americans journeyed around the moon. When I graduated from high school, only three years had passed since a man flew for the first time across the Atlantic Ocean. Despite the obvious difference in years, we have this in common: we all know what it is to be young at the start of an age of adventure. You will discover, as I did, that each person must make his own exploration of the world, make his own discoveries, shape his own triumphs, endure his own tragedies. Each of us is an explorer of himself, of history, of knowledge, of the intricate and beautiful and wonderful varieties of experience• Each of you will make a different kind of exploration, some in continued formal education, some in industry or business or agriculture. Whatever your choice, learn. Learn all you can about yourself and the world. Your final year in high school was the beginning of an age of adventure, an age you will help to shape. You have my highest hopes and best wishes. 2