From the Archives: Graduation

Some people assume that since Wooster opened its doors to students in the fall of 1926, that the first Graduation was held in 1927. In fact, that is not true, as that would have given those graduating just one year as Wooster students. Instead, the school did not celebrate its first graduates until 1929. The first commencement of the school was held on June 9, 1929, with two boys graduating, Frederick F. Fuessenich and Cecil M. Munoz Jr.

Both members of the Class of 1929 went on to attend Amherst College; Fuessenich, a four-year Wooster student, to study Pomology (the science of growing fruit), and Munoz, who started in 10th grade, to study Law.

Then on June 7, 1930 Wooster held its Second Annual Commencement Exercises. This time there were nine members of the class of 1930: Franklyn L. Baldwin, John H. Barton, Robert H. Cooley, William P. Goergen, William H. Hunter, W. Barry Jennings, James Stirling, Paul B. Walker, George B. Watts. Goergen was the Valedictorian; Jennings the Salutatorian.

As the Chapel was not yet completed at that time, prior to the 1930 Commencement service starting at noon, at 10:30 am, there was the “laying of the cornerstone of James Marshall Memorial Chapel. Address by Mr. James Marshall, nephew of the late Mr. James Marshall, in whose memory the Chapel is given.”

Wooster printed its first yearbook in 1930, and in a message from the faculty to the first graduating classes, it was written, “You are the first boys who shall carry the name of Wooster into college. We are happy in the conviction that you will bring credit to yourselves and your school.”

“Each one of our group goes to a different sphere of activity. One boy is to study Architecture, another Forestry, another the Ministry. In spite of an Alumni Association which is to be formed, some of us may never see the others after Commencement Day. But whatever destiny Fate has in store for each of us, we shall always be bound together by the same joy in our years here, by the same pride in being Wooster’s first offspring, and by the same hope for her glorious future.”

And a glorious future it has been, as Wooster continues to have its place and meaning, and goes on from strength to strength all of these years later.