Graduation Saturday, May 13, dawned clear and sunny in Washington, D.C. While the clouds eventually rolled in, the threatened rain was held at bay just long enough by the combined prayers of the clergy, faculty and students, and their families and friends. Thus blessed, the 117th commencement exercises of The Catholic University of America proceeded with all the pomp and ceremony a loving parent could wish for, in a glorious setting on the east steps of the huge Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, and CNN senior reporter and author Wolf Blitzer received honorary doctorates from CUA. Mr. Blitzer gave the keynote address, including some very insightful remarks on the duties of the media to the public and to our service men and women in a time of war.
At the ceremony our son John received his BA in physics, magna cum laude, with a minor in economics. On hand were John's brothers Matt and Andrew, his sister Megan (the Templon sibs are shown in the picture) and of course, Mom and Dad. Also attending were Grandpa Henry Fiore, Great Uncle Billy Fiore and Wife Olla, Grandmom Joyce Anderson (shown with grandson John)
and Husband John, Aunt Cyndi Thurston, and Cousin Lana Brown, with Husband James and baby Angelina. After
the ceremonies, almost everybody congregated at the Brown residence in Alexandria for hors d'oeuvres and a light dinner prepared by Michelle.On the previous Friday we were thrilled to see John receive his designation as a University Scholar, one of only twelve such awards in a class of over 700 undergraduates.
In an interesting coincidence, an old friend of Michelle's, Etti Butters, also received her Masters degree in architecture at this ceremony. Her husband Jerry, whom we hadn't seen in many years, chose to sit right in front of us, out of a crowd of about two thousand!
On Sunday, yours truly had a delicious Mother's Day breakfast with the Browns and Andersons (masterfully prepared by James), and then drove back into D.C. to help John with the last details of packing up his dorm room. After shoe-horning a room-and-a-half's worth of stuff into our Focus wagon for John's homeward trip, I took his leftover food and some other furnishings in my car, and drove them over to Matt, who needed to get his belongings from a hotel near Dupont Circle to Marquette University's Les Aspin Center, just four blocks from the Capitol. Matt will be spending the next five weeks in Washington, interning in the offices of Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. He is already pumping his brother for inside info on the Washington nightlife.
John is now home with us. He has chosen to seriously pursue an avocation that he fell in love with while serving this last year as Sports Editor for "The Tower," CUA's weekly student newspaper. Starting tomorrow, he will be covering the central New Jersey scholastic sports scene for the Times of Trenton, our daily newspaper, and perhaps serving as their local sports statistician. "The Times" will tell if the reporting bug will trump the call of physics and economics, but maybe having Wolf Blitzer as an honorary member of the CUA Class of 2006 is an omen.
