15. Senior Year

To my disappointment the season ended and I was taken back to Sitka. I looked like a Woodsman with my long hair. I paraded up and down Main Street with a rifle in my hand then cashed my checks, paid Sitka Cold Storage Co., and got a haircut. Now I was ready for my Senior year. Students went through high school at Mt. Edgecumbe totally oblivious to the future. Sitka provided the only real evidence to the world. It had amenities necessary for city life. It was an Incorporated City and that sounded important. Sitka, Nome, Anchorage, and Fairbanks were cities, too. But the 48 States south of us had cities with millions or citizens in them. Unbelievable farm lands and ranches keep them fed. My only clue as to how they functioned were the movies of the 1940's. Lawyers, doctors, crime fighters were a fact of life. Their repeated exposure on film suggested cities on the brink of mob control and the citizenry obsessed with health care. Vast plains were protected by the US Cavalry who were exterminating warrior Indians. To the victors went the land. Though I knew these movies to be fictitious I wondered how far from the truth really they were. But my fantasies were fueled. I would star as a physician/statesman in a movie called "Marcus Aurelius M.D." I would eradicate cancer through a great research institution and as the peoples tribune I would replace the President, abolish Congress and the Supreme Court and return all the lands to the Indians and their Chiefs. In the final scene I would join the five Sullivan brothers in their space walk to heaven. I would be the one to shout. "Hey. Fellas. Wait for me!" As preparation for living in the white man's world the movies would not be a very good guide but it seemed possible that I could make it with a very good imagination. And power. And money. The Senior year was drawing to a close. I hadn't ordered a class ring. The year book "TAHETA 1956" was being sold for $5.00. The name stood for the six native tribes of Alaska: Thlingit, Athabascan, Haida, Eskimo, Tshimpsian, and Aleut. I felt a proud kinship with my native brothers and sisters. Under my round, smiling face capped with mortar and tassel were the I words, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." Someone who knew me well put those words there and in later years I would quote them as my motto. Commencement exercises came on a warm, sunny June day. We put on our black cap and gowns and I felt like a priest. I thought I looked as wise as a tree full of owls. Before going into the gym we all milled around the cannon and flagpole which were in front of the administration building. Someone said prophetically. "Hey. This might be the last time we'll all be together." Someone else suggested that we have a reunion at Anchorage in 1960. It was a good idea but I had my doubts because I had seen the destruction that alcohol done to recent graduates. Some of my basketball heroes were already drinking themselves to death. Could we be far behind? The time came for our procession into the gym and our seats. Since I was shortest I would be first. Anxiety fill me because I didn't like being in the public eye. The girl I was paired with shifted uneasily on her first high heels. We walked in slowly as the band played "Pomp and Circumstance." The girl next to me wobbled precariously and halfway up the aisle she fell and almost knocked me off my feet. I wasn't graduating with dignity. I sat a waited for the speeches. The longer, the better. The valedictorian, Walter Baldwin, gave a great speech. I was amazed that he gave the whole thing from memory. He had come a long way from being a Holy Cross Mission urchin and I was proud of him. Then the great, wise white man spoke. In stentorian tones, sometimes gazing into the distance, he told us that this Commencement was the beginning of our lives. Life, he said, was fraught with danger and we should face it with courage and circumspection. Not to worry, sir, I could live in the boys' dormitory the rest of my life. I was as much prepared. I made my way up the stage received my diploma and sat down. Then it struck me that I was the first of my family tree to graduate high school. Since far before the pyramids were built in Egypt my ancestors lived and survived in the Arctic never learning a written language. Could someone have written a great epic like “The Odyssey?" I don't think there was an Alexander the Great to write about since imperialism is not in our nature. Philosophy for the ages could not be written for the exigencies ‘of survival of life itself left precious little time for the invention of a written language. So here I was, over nineteen centuries after the death of Christ, conversant and literate in the English language. Graduating with me were about a hundred Alaska natives, many of whom were experiencing an original accomplishment in their family histories. Their ancestors no doubt had epics that were never written. The Commencement signaled a necessary departure from our ancestral cultures and beginning of life in a great democratic society. Our elders had stepped into the twentieth century and were not present to voice their feelings or wish us luck. For our peoples these were changing times.