My Personal Graduation
- Martha Travis
- May 7, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: May 12, 2024
Today I am celebrating my personal graduation from Phillips Exeter Academy just as surely as any of you have in the past or will in years to come. I appreciate all of you joining me in this celebration, the preparation for which, I might add, took me over twelve years, not the customary one, two, three, or four. That alone is a large part of what I want to share with you: my awareness that there is a rhythm for each one of us in this journey through life. We will, each one of us in our own time, choose our own direction and make our own place. We are not all ready to matriculate at fourteen any more than we are all ready to know what "we want to be" at age eighteen. After all, here I am in my late fifties, and I have not only just gone through a delayed adolescence, but I am ready to pursue new goals. There truly is a time and a season for each one of us.
As I have come to know myself here at the academy I have also known that someday I would want to share myself with all of you who have been such a great family for me—because I care about you. I'm going to tell you more about the me you already know and then I want to share something of the "me" you have never known. Today these "me's" are becoming congruent. As I recently told Steve Amira, my counselor, "I begin to feel as if I am walking in just one pair of shoes." It feels great! I want to tell you briefly how I came to accept my two selves as shaped by my "Exeter experience."
In '78, I went through orientation as an unsure newly hired member of the Alumni Records staff. There I faced new challenges (computers) and my first real job since I had left teaching in '57 to raise our family of four children. Frank and I had married on September 11, 1954, during Hurricane Edna, which was perhaps a portent of stormy times ahead. Our life together has been very rich, however, with the adventures and new paths that we've taken through the vagaries of parenthood, from formula through Little League to marriages and career choices of our children and their partners, and then back to formula for our grandchildren, little Katie and big Ben.
It was hard for me to reenter the work force. Somehow, during my concentrated years of being a wife and mother and volunteer, I had lost confidence in my abilities. But here at Exeter I found the support and friendship of my workmates as well as an atmosphere that not only was accepting of me as I was, but one in which growth was encouraged. As the months went by and I learned more about the school, I felt more and more comfortable. I was proud to be a part of such a venerable institution, one whose leaders uphold the lofty ideals of its founder, John Phillips: to educate young people of ability from all quarters in both knowledge and moral goodness. I liked what I saw.
I soon began to feel cheated, however, by the isolation of our office on the fourth floor of Jeremiah Smith and by the fact that we rarely had contact with students and faculty, as well as staff from other buildings. Because of this I talked with Pat Hess, then the personnel director, and I told her that I would like a more responsible position that would give me contact with the students. One day months later a call came from her asking if I'd seen the posting for the position of appointment secretary in admissions. Indeed, I had stopped to read it several times It had drawn me like a magnet, yet fear of my inadequacies always overcame me so that I had never pursued it. The unknown frightened me. It looked like too big a step for me to take, too much of a risk. Pat's call gave me the confidence to apply. But I still doubted my ability to do the work. After all, I was just an ordinary person with a public school background and a state university education. I had no riches, no pedigree, and no outstanding talents.
Why, I even made most of my own clothes at home. How would I match up with visitors from all over the world?
I admit that there may have been times in the ensuing years when both Jack Herney, then the new director of admissions, and I wondered about the wisdom of his choice. However, under his leadership and with his ideas for a unique guide and hosting program, we—together with your interest, time, youth, and pride in your school—have brought the program to the exciting life it has today under Rick Schubart and your new guide coordinator and appointment secretary, Susanne Renselaer.
I loved the work from day one when I arrived at Bell House to warm greetings from the staff, a pot of mums on my desk along with a very professional placard reading "Mrs. Travis." I always looked forward to the new day and the adventures that it would bring. As I drove to Exeter from Brentwood each day I would wonder if the puzzle pieces would fit, if the personalities, timing, guides, weather and interviewers would mesh into a beautiful pattern or if (more likely) the day would be less than smooth. Each day was fascinating and different. I especially cherished the contact and closeness I shared with so many of you students and now graduated students over the ten years that I was at Bell House. I treasured following you and your growth during both your good times and your bad times at the academy. It meant a lot to me to have you just stop in to say "Hi," to check on the Rice Krispie supply, to see if I needed help, to get a Bandaid, a safety pin, a hug or a Kleenex. Some days you smelled the wood smoke and came to sit down on the floor in front of the fireplace. I shared the price and love and concern of your folks. I mothered you unabashedly. You shared your youth and enthusiasm with me. It was a two-way street.
My personal graduation may be different from yours, but many of the lessons we learn are the same, and just as important as any to be found in English and History.
Five lessons for life
The first lesson I have already mentioned: that each of us is a unique human being—special—and that each of us will move through life in his or her own time and way, in his or her own rhythm. A second lesson, very difficult for me as it turns out, is to look inward to oneself. A third lesson is that it is important to express one's feelings: without doubt the suppression of feelings has had a profound effect on my physical and emotional well-being. A fourth lesson is that it is all right to be needy; in fact, it is not only all right, but it is healthy to reach out to others when in need. And a fifth lesson, especially for us adults in the community, is to take time to be aware and sensitive to the loneliness or pain of all, but particularly the young people in our midst. Reach out to them.
Learning these lessons allows me to tell you the following: I had just turned fourteen on the February day when my Dad and my brothers, John and Bobby, and I were excitedly traveling across the state from home in Swanzey Center to the University of Durham to watch the state basketball tournament. I remember the three of us arguing over who would sit in front and who would get which side of the back seat. That settled, we anticipated the contests ahead, and all made our predictions of the outcomes. The next memories I have of the ensuing weeks are few and dark and timeless as I would drift into consciousness long enough to ask, "Where's Daddy?" Gradually over time at the Exeter Hospital I learned that we had been in a head-on collision in which I, seriously injured, had been the only survivor from our car. My father, John, and Bobby had been killed. In one instant life had changed forever.
Although I remember only the feeling of total darkness, eventually I read the newspaper headlines and the story of the triple tragedy, and then finally I accepted that it was true because there it was in print along with a picture of the accident scene. I accepted that they were dead and the eventual implications of my responsibilities because of my survival. You see, my mother was already functionally impaired in a steadily progressing passive withdrawn state, not to be acknowledged or talked about openly by family or community in those days. Today she probably could have been treated for schizophrenia. She had remained at home that day with my 18-month-old towheaded little sister, Lucy. When I returned to my tiny community and my grandfolk's home after six weeks of healing, there was no talk of the accident and less not were there photographs in evidence as reminders. I was not able to reach out to others as a 14-year-old, and I did not want to be different. And no one reached out enough or in the right way to me. A big hug and a sincere vocal "I'm glad we've got you" or "I love you" just might have broken the ice, and I might have been able to have feelings.
In my late teenage years I began to express my inner turmoil through strange eating habits. By my early twenties these habits blossomed into a full-blown eating disorder called bulimia: except back then there was no name or publicity regarding this bingeing and purging cycle. I did not question the why of it; I did not know that there was a name for it or that anyone else in the whole world did this. So, how could I ever tell anyone? I could not. It was my secret. I only fretted because I could not stop; I prayed to stop. I prayed for strength. I made daily as well as weekly, monthly and annual New Year's resolutions to "not do it again." To no avail. For some reason although it felt awful, it also felt good. It was a compulsion; I had some control over my feelings and over my life. Subconsciously I had suppressed all feelings.
Along with my bulimia, achieving and not being too much of a burden to anyone else became my survival mechanisms. For thirty years they served me well. So, I became the me you know: a together person, a leader, an achiever, a marathon runner—you name it. I was always busy and ready to do more.
Four years ago this past June, it was because I was comfortable enough in my personal life, in the unfailing love and support of my husband, Frank, and secure and at ease enough with you, my "work family," that I was finally able to do what I'd known I had to do for several years since the time that eating disorders had become a talked-about behavior. Through circuitous means I found my way to a psychologist in Brookline, Mass., far enough from home so no one would recognize me I hoped. I wanted to get my problem all taken care of during summer vacation. Period. Neat and clean—just like that. It took me over thirty years of secrecy before I gathered the strength and comfort to look squarely at myself and admit, "I have this problem—I need help." Yet I expected to heal in two months. In answer to the question, "Well what brought you here today?" I blurted out, "I have bulimia," and thus began a whole new life for me and my family. In fact, the bulimia stopped after I had been in counseling for about four months, talking about my feelings and my past. But that was only the beginning, only the removing of a symptom. I still had ahead of me a long, unpredictable, painful journey starting in the summer of '86 through a much-delayed adolescence as I have gone through the grieving and mourning process of dealing with my losses. It has at the same time been a period of introspection, of getting to know myself, and of learning to reach out to others.
And I know now that no one goes through life without experiencing difficulties and pain. That is part of life. William Faulkner indicates that he would rather have experienced pain than to have experienced nothing at all. I think so many times of you students who must feel at times as if the very fact of your being at one of the finest preparatory schools in the world should mean that you are beyond having problems. Also, it may make you feel that admitting to have a weakness or a need is an additional stress with which you just can't deal. That you have to be strong—perfect. This is not so. You are human. No one is perfect.
But to know these problems, you have to look inward, to know yourselves, which brings me to my last lesson. The first time Steve said to me, "Marty if money were no object what would you really want to do?" his question threw me for a loop. Want to do—me? I did what was expected, followed the rules, and did not rock the boat—too much. I did not know what I wanted to do: I didn't know myself.
Think about that for a minute.
Take time to look inward, as Leo Buscaglia would say, "into the dark places." What do you like to do? What makes you happy? What makes you angry or sad? Why? When you begin to acquire that self-awareness your choices and decisions and actions will become more sure. This wondrous magic that I've so often seen happening with you is possible here at Exeter because we are each accepted for ourselves. And, lo and behold, it can happen to us all in our time and place. It is never too late.
This is a talk that my mother, Marty Travis, gave upon leaving her job at Phillips Exeter Academy in 1990 after twelve years fulfilling years there. It was one in a series of Thursday morning "meditations" held in the Phillips church, a tradition at the academy attended by students, faculty, and staff. A combination of mental and physical challenges eventually wore her down, leading to her suicide in 1998. Her memorial service, held in the Phillips church, filled its pews again. ~ Mark
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