Graduates reflect on their very special day and see bright futures

By Susan Lang and Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

Even threatening, early-morning storm clouds could not put a damper on Cornell's 2002 graduation day. At dawn, a light wind blew into Ithaca from the south and the temperature held at 58 degrees. The sky retained its ominous tone during the hour-long procession of graduates from the Arts Quad to Schoellkopf Field.

But during Cornell President Hunter Rawlings' Commencement address, the sky began to lighten. And just as he began to confer degrees on the assembled graduates at about 11:40 a.m., the sky turned blue and the sun came out. To the graduating students, the weather did not matter. More than an hour before the procession to Schoellkopf Field, students had begun cheerfully lining up on the Arts Quad.

• Kristin Myers, Divya Thomas, Stevie Smith and Vicky Lenkaitas, all of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, moved along the procession route with three balloons in the shape of numbers. From a distance, their balloons read "202." Why? One of the zeroes had accidentally flown away.

• Tim Benishek, from Canastota, N.Y., who graduated with a horticulture degree, proudly wore a floral bouquet -- of Dutch irises, mixed-color daisies, ferns, ivy and carnations -- atop his mortarboard.

• Thomas Chen, who earned his engineering degree, not only hosted his mother from New York City and sister, Emily, a Cornell sophomore also in engineering, but his petite and non-English speaking grandmother, Ning Chiu, who flew in from Taiwan to see her firstborn grandchild get his college degree.

  "I could not have replicated this kind of education anywhere else," said Chen, who plans a career in operations research. First, however, he plans to travel and return in the fall to begin earning his Cornell master's degree in engineering.

• Sometimes it is a dog's world. David Crum, of Lockport, N.Y., and Candice Flynn, of Potomac, Md., both of whom earned their doctorates of veterinary medicine, were escorted from the the Arts Quad to Schoellkopf by Bisou, a Staffordshire mix, and by Sasha, a Boxer mix. A Great Dane named Dulce accompanied Tracy Powell, of Long Island, who also earned her veterinary degree.

• Newly minted engineering graduate Xavier Thomas, from Jamaica, wore an embroidered Kinte cloth around his neck, atop his graduation gown. "The scarf and the emblems on it are a symbol of the unity of all the Pan African groups on campus," Thomas said. His next step, he said, is a job as a mechanical engineer at Knolls Atomic Power Lab, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, in upstate New York.

• Sarah Dryer, of Cincinnati, who earned a psychology degree, pursued her love of crew while at Cornell. She was not on Cornell's team, but instead she coached the girls' crew at Ithaca's Cascadilla Boat Club during the past year. "That was the best thing I did my senior year," said Dryer.

  The high school members of the team that Dryer trained attended the ceremonies at Schoellkopf Field in their crew uniforms to see their coach graduate, as did Dryer's own family of rowers. (Dryer's father rowed lightweight crew at Harvard, and her two brothers and sister rowed in high school and college. Her mom knows how to row, too, she said.) Dryer hopes to spend the summer in Ithaca and to continue mentoring her crew of high school rowers.

• Waitz Tsui-Yee Ngan's mortarboard celebrated her full immersion in the Cornell experience. And her parents flew in from Hong Kong to witness her special day. A Merrill Presidential Scholar; Human Ecology ambassador; chair of Voices, the student council of the College of Human Ecology; orientation volunteer; and now a Cornell graduate with a bachelor's degree in nutrition, Ngan hopes to get an internship or job in international health or nutrition for a year and then enter medical school in 2003.

Oh -- and during her student career, Ngan also climbed to the top of McGraw Tower three times a week to play the chimes as a chimesmaster. Appropriately, Ngan's graduation cap was fringed with little golden bells.