On Top of the Tower

Students take turns climbing up to the chapel’s 90-foot parapet. Photo by David Warren. This story was published in NMH Magazine in 2019.

Students take turns climbing up to the chapel’s 90-foot parapet. Photo by David Warren. This story was published in NMH Magazine in 2019.

Early on the morning of Commencement at Northfield Mount Hermon, English teacher Hugh Silbaugh wakes in the dark, pulls on a warm jacket and hat, and gets to Memorial Chapel well before 5 a.m. He greets security officer Bob Felton, who unlocks the door. Silbaugh climbs a narrow set of stairs, then an even narrower ladder, and emerges through a trap door onto a platform at the top of the chapel tower. Then he waits.

The first group of students appears at 4:58, as the sky is starting to lighten. For nearly a decade, Silbaugh has welcomed seniors to take in a view of campus they’ve never seen before, from 90 feet up. He’s continuing a tradition begun years ago by a long-retired English teacher who brought students from his dorm to watch the sunrise before graduation. “I thought everyone should get to do this,” Silbaugh says.

The first group appears at 4:58, as the sky lightens. “Holy crap!” exclaims one boy as he leans on the waist-high parapet. “The campus looks so small.”

In sweatpants and hoodies, the students climb up the tower a dozen or so at a time. They have five or 10 minutes to look around at the hills across the Connecticut River, the campus fields and buildings they know so well, and the green of spring. They take photos, and then Silbaugh sends them down the ladder so another group can take their place.

Some of the seniors are gleefully in-the-moment. “This is like a rollercoaster!” one declares. Others are more reflective. “I can’t believe this day is here” one sighs, gazing out at the horizon. “I was so worried I was going to mess things up this year.”

Down on the ground, a handful of teachers have set up a table with doughnuts, hot chocolate, and coffee. Some students straggle back to their dorms for a few more minutes of sleep; others linger, sitting on the grass with their coffee cups, savoring their last morning on campus together.

On top of the tower, Silbaugh greets the last group of students. “I hate heights so much,” one girl frets, hesitating on the ladder. “Four years of hard work, just to plummet to my death?” Silbaugh offers his hand and pulls her onto the platform. Her friends, wrapped in blankets, huddle protectively around her. They look out over the campus, turn their faces up to the sky. “OK,” she says. “This is worth it.”

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Man of Many Words