BETHEL — Gould Academy presented diplomas to 51 seniors at its 185th commencement exercises on Saturday – 13 of them remote, but the rest were in person.

Led by bagpiper and Gould alumna Hillary Hough Anderson, class of 2007, speakers, faculty, and graduating seniors made their way from the steps of Hanscom Hall across Alumni Field, where Covid guidelines meant that a reduced number of family and friends gathered under the tent to celebrate the class of 2021.

Emily Drummond, class of  2001, gave the invocation and benediction, and Tao Smith, class of 1990 awarded diplomas at his first commencement ceremony as Gould’s Head of School.

Lydia Bennett, a Bethel native, gave the Valedictory address, and Liam Hourihan was elected by their classmates to give the class of 2021 address.

Phyllis Gardiner, president of the Gould Academy Board of Trustees, introduced keynote speaker Brian Walker ’83, a former faculty member and author who currently teaches at Buckingham Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge, Mass.

Walker first acknowledged that graduation speeches are rarely remembered, which freed him, he said, “to bend all of your ears in uncomfortable ways; twist the cartilage of rote and routine to create a new way of processing sound. Of processing the world. Of processing the job that now waits for you, just on the other side of that razor-thin piece of paper, that passport to the real world you’ve heard so much about and are dying to join.”

He invited the audience “to see the Gould that I saw—where the end of an era and the birth of a new one overlapped and coexisted for a little while, each as different from each other as rocks and water.”

Walker had made that first trip to Bethel by car all the way from East Cleveland, “from concrete and asphalt and everything I knew, to tall trees and soccer goals and a wide world of mystery,” happy to find a few kids, and even a teacher, who “looked like me.”

He described the faculty and others who made him feel welcome at Gould, “so many names that I could list them all day—and all of those people, all of those white people, made the place special, accommodating, home. No DEI training, no equity workshops, just the desire to teach and to learn and to grow.”

“Gould was Camelot, back then,” he said. “It was an awesome place for a Black kid from East Cleveland. For a white kid from Rockland. For a bi-racial kid from the lower east side of Manhattan. For an international student from Caracas, Venezuela. For the Sanchez siblings from Spain.”

But, he added, “Gould doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Sometimes the outside world encroached on the bubble.”

He described the time “the rebel flag unfurled from a dorm window, and a Black kid named Adam, face covered in tears and snot, painfully pointing it out to me.”

He told of the night when several “townies decided that it would be fun to dress up like the Klan and march through the middle of campus, burning a cross.” He described how afraid he was after that to go to town, to cross the street, to be outside in Bethel.

“Gould was a little less special for me after that. And even though we took them to court, the prosecutor—Janet Mills—couldn’t bring them real pain because there were no hate laws on the books at the time,” he said. “I graduated confused.”

But Walker returned and spent three years on the faculty, happy to find there were still students who looked like him, and says he would have stayed longer “if not for the uncomfortable and unavoidable fact that Bethel, Maine, was a desert for a single Black man.”

In 2012, Walker wrote a novel, “Black Boy/White School,” based largely on his experiences at Gould, and visited campus again on the book tour.

“I made it my business to visit with the kids of color,” he said, “but could only meet half, as the other kid was out of town that day. The other kid. Two. My mind was blown.”

He emphasized the importance of diversity, “how it broadens horizons and perspectives and lives. We know that the world is growing smaller each day and that simple demographic math tells us that very, very soon there will be more people of color in these United States than white people.”

“What you see around you right now is NOT an accurate reflection of the world you’re about to enter,” he told the graduates. “It isn’t monochromatic and neat and pristine. It’s messy. Diverse. And it speaks many tongues.”

He advised graduates “not to live with your head in the sand. Actively connect to people and cultures outside of your own. Listen to learn. Learn to listen. Use your privilege—and you ARE privileged,” he told them, “to impact positive change. Stand up for someone who doesn’t look like you, who doesn’t come from similar backgrounds, doesn’t speak the same languages of privilege and class. Be humble. Be open. Be antiracist. Be anti classist. Be anti jerk.”

Many at Gould “have already started the hard work to root out institutional racism here,” he added, “to make it a place where students can be comfortable being themselves and even being more than one person. I’m excited and optimistic because I see their commitment is genuine. And although there aren’t many now, I look forward to future commencements when the names and the backgrounds of the new Gould alumni are as varied as the trees all around us.”

The following members of the Gould Academy class of 2021 received awards at Commencement:

•  Valedictorian Lydia Bennett the Headmaster’s Bowl, awarded to the senior who has exhibited the highest standards of scholarship, character and service to the school and participation in activities of the school, as well as the Scholarship Shield and the French Prize.

•  Salutatorian Kaitlyn Saidy, of Nashville, Tennessee, also received the French Prize.

•  Elizabeth Skillings of Scarborough, Maine, received the History Prize, the Jan & Lorenzo Baker Award, and the Linwood “Lindy” Lowell Award.

•  Sara Harvey of Bethel received the William P. Clough III Award for  outstanding character, attitude, and leadership.

•  The Gould Academy Alumni Association Award was presented to Wyatt Thielbar of Bethel.

•  The Senior Point Award was presented to Olivia Cordeiro of Bethel for her project to create Braille Children’s Books for the Bethel Library. She also received the Spanish Prize.

•  The Ouwinga Citizenship Award went to Cassandra Pyle of Hollis, New Hampshire.

•  The Annie Daley Courchesne Award was presented to Ella Raymond of Bethel, who also received the Pottery Book Award.

•  Town of Newry awards were presented to Ava Mastrionni and Kyle Rivard.

•  Wu Junfei of Shanghai, China, received the Elwood F. Ireland Award for outstanding Service, Leadership and Character.

•  Emalee Coffin of Woodstock was awarded the Elwood F. Ireland Award, a Woodstock Student’s Scholarship, and the Melmac Principal’s Scholarship.

•  Alexander Baribeau of Bethel and Alexis Ordway of Gorham, Maine, received awards as Outstanding Senior Athletes.

•  Yao “James” Runzhe of Wuhan, China, received the Science Prize as well the Ralph Gould Music Award.

•  Dylan Greenberg of Bethel received the Computer Science Prize as well as the Innovator’s Award. Earlier this spring, he was awarded a River Fund Maine Scholarship.

•  Utah Bean of Bethel and Annabelle Forsley of Scarborough, Maine, won awards from Next Gen Personal Finance.

•  Li Jiaqi of Beijing, China, received the Gayle A. Foster Award for outstanding work in photography.

•  The Art Department Book Awards and the Art Department Purchase Award were presented to Li Yuxuan of Anyang, China.

•  The Mandarin Prize was awarded to Kim Jinkyu, of Seoul, South Korea.

•  The Theater Prize went to Auburn Putz-Burton of Smithtown, New York.

•  Olivia Knight  of Raleigh, North Carolina, received the English Prize.

•  The Math Prize was awarded to Yixuan Peng of Hainan, China, and Shan Wei of Hangzhou, China.

•  These members of the senior class were elected to the Cum Laude Society: Lydia Bennett, Kaitlyn Saidy, Yao Runzhe, Elizabeth Skillings, Alexa Daigle, Annabelle Forsley, Kim Jinkyu, Eric Lee, Shan Wei, and Xie Chen.