Recently, I was asked to act as a kind of master of ceremonies for a joint 50th reunion at a boarding school — Hebron Academy in Maine — I had once attended.

The reunion involved the classes of ’70, ’71, and ’72 due to the pandemic, which had caused multiple postponements.

We were gathered in the Community Baptist Church — a simple, white structure that, while not technically part of the school, in my day had served as a frequent gathering place, including a mandatory weekly Vespers service Sunday evenings before dinner.

My role this day included delivering some words of welcome to the assembled alumni. I did so from the church’s pulpit, a spot I had never occupied previously. Indeed, I was one of those students who tended to hover near the back of the church, putting some distance between myself and the head of school, a formidable character with a Douglas McArthur demeanor. 

Towards the end of my opening remarks, I was to call for a minute of silence for departed class members, whose names — and there were a startling number of them — were listed in the program.

A few minutes before all of this, while preparing, I was trying to come up with a proper transition. Which led to me telling a particular story.

At this school, in those days, we ate meals family-style, with a faculty member at the head, a spouse, perhaps, to the left, and five or six students filling out the table. One student would serve as a kind of busboy. Another would work in the kitchen.

We would rotate table populations — and chores — weekly.

It was the fall of 1967, a Sunday — breakfast time. We had just remixed the tables. I found next to me a fellow I didn’t really know, as it was his first year. He told me his name was Doug Darling. We chatted about this and that. Along the way, I found out that his parents were coming to campus to take him away for the day to Reid State Park on the Maine shore.

This was a big deal. We were an all-boys school located in the woods. Getting off campus was a constant craving. My parents were in Massachusetts. On this day, I wasn’t going anywhere. Put succinctly, I was envious of Doug Darling.

I have no recollection of what I did to fill the time the rest of that day. Perhaps I caught up on some reading, including the New York Times, which I had delivered each Sunday (my one splurge). Perhaps I took a walk around campus or iced some bruises from the previous day’s football game.

What I do remember vividly was learning — at Vespers, in the church — that Douglas Darling was no longer with us.

The head of school, Claude Allen, told us that Douglas had been swept off one of the park’s rocky outcroppings by a rogue wave and had drowned.

I was stunned. We were all stunned. For me, the fact that he had been sitting beside me a few hours earlier, as alive and vibrant as any other 17-year-old, had a profound impact. 

We subsequently filed to the dining hall and ate our meal in near-silence, save for the clatter of cutlery upon china. The empty chair at our table provided mute testimony to what had transpired.

Later that evening, after lights out, when we were all supposed to be in our dorm rooms, three of us, using a key we had previously purloined, made our way up into the bell tower of the main school building. We looked out across the campus … and deep within ourselves.

“Everything,” we had been told many times by some our elders, “happens for a reason.” Try as we might, we could not make that saying fit this circumstance. 

That was the vignette I told before asking for a minute of silence. While they reflected on their departed classmates, I thought of poor Doug Darling, gone forever between breakfast and dinner.

Bob can be reached at bob.waite@senecacollege.ca You can read more of his columns here.