While my Facebook friends celebrate their children’s college graduations I’m reminded of a small controversy surrounding my stepdaughter’s graduation speaker.  Darcy attended Scripps College in Claremont, a nice older suburb east of Los Angeles.  Scripps is one college in a group that included Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Claremont-McKenna, Pitzer and Pamona.  Darcy was on a full-ride merit-based scholarship, as were most of her friends at Scripps.  Many of the students were too rich to be impressed by a Loveland High cheerleader, homecoming queen, valedictorian, straight-A student and runner-up for Miss Loveland Valentine.

This is not in any way to demean Scripps which was an incredible academic experience for Darcy.  The campus was beautiful.  As you strolled around the flower, palm and lavender tree-strewn campus admiring the Spanish architecture, the only things marring your view were the abundant posters offering counseling for young women suffering from anorexia and bulimia.  And the wet-concrete inscription, “One must eat to excrete,” a sidewalk philosophy possibly contributed years earlier by a former Harvey Mudd student.

Scripps was the sort of fat-cat, liberal arts women’s college where you might expect Hillary Clinton as graduation speaker.  In fact, Hillary did speak there, a few years later.  But in 1997, the year Darcy graduated, the year Colorado State University invited Boston Globe journalist Ellen Goodman as graduation speaker, the all-female student body at Scripps was dismayed to discover their graduation speaker was a four-star Army general who’d led the NATO forces in Bosnia.  Even Darcy, who’d dated a Marine from nearby Camp Pendleton, saw this as weird.

I was actually sort of intrigued by the controversy.  Though I was around seven months pregnant at the time, I squeezed my way through the seats, and waddled down the aisle as close as I could to take a photograph of a slim, photogenic greying man in military dress with an engaging smile.

Neither my husband nor I remember anything about the graduation speech.  My husband spent most of the time chasing our toddler around.  I’m not sure what my excuse was.  Not until the 2004 presidential election, when Gen. Wesley Clark was a Democratic candidate, did it occur to me he might be the man I’d photographed.  I pulled out the photograph, and, sure enough, he was.

We make an awfully big deal about graduation speeches.  When it comes down to it, even if we're sober, I’m not sure most of us remembers those lofty platitudes.  I can't even remember who spoke at my college graduation, let alone what they said.  I do remember the crude jokes my boyfriend and brother exchanged at lunch afterwards.  All the advice, no matter how well-meaning, slipped away, if it even connected in the first place.  All that remains are the controversies.