Some scenes from a bright Commencement weekend for Cornell

By 6:20 a.m. May 29, the morning of Senior Convocation ceremonies -- which began at 9 -- the line for seats in Schoellkopf Field already was snaking down Campus Road, and out of sight.

Helen Maduka -- with her children, Ifediora, Amaka and Nonso -- drove up from Columbia, Md., to watch her daughter graduate. But unique among parents on hand for the weekend's Commencement ceremonies, Helen had the pleasure of watching her daughter, student trustee Ifunanya, or "Funa," Maduka, chat with a former U.S. president -- as Funa did while seated on stage with Clinton. And Helen and her family had some of the best seats of the house -- front row, center aisle, right in front of the podium. As the crowd rushed up to the stage following the ceremony, Clinton shook hands with those lucky enough to be along the white fence separating him from the crowd. Among the several dozen people Clinton greeted first were the Madukas. He shook hands with each member of the family, asking Funa's siblings how old they were and telling Funa's mother that she has a "remarkable daughter."

One of warmest audience members during Convocation was Rachel Weitzman-Yeh, who has lived in Ithaca long enough to know to wear a fur-lined winter coat on such mornings here in May. Keith Eggleston, senior climatologist with Cornell's Northeast Regional Climate Center, pointed out that the normal average temperature for May 29 in Ithaca is 60 degrees.

Proceeding with the academic procession from the Arts Quad to Schoellkopf Field for Commencement ceremonies on May 30, Whitney Harper, who earned her degree in hotel administration, passed the campus's Statler Hotel. Her face beamed with happiness and pride. Statler Hotel employees stood across the street from Barton Hall as she passed and cheered her and her soon-to-be-conferred comrades.

Harper's stadium march will continue after graduation, as she will go on to Athens, Greece, this summer to help feed the world's greatest athletes. She will assist with food service for the summer Olympics and the Para Olympiad afterward.

"This is impressive," Robert Brandt (Cornell Class of '71), from Leeds, Mass., said of Sunday's Commencement. His daughter, Jessica Brandt, a psychology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, took part in the ceremonies. "President Lehman's speech dovetailed nicely with Clinton's," Robert Brandt said. "The ideas perfectly integrated."

The couple spotted their daughter waving to them as she marched with the academic procession past the stadium's crescent, far below the seats where they were sitting in the "E-F" section -- and they waved back excitedly. Other graduates located their parents in the stands by making cell phone calls.

"It's a great event -- very together, considering how massive it is," said Jessica's younger sister, Alexis, a rising sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "It's exciting. There's a lot of promise in the air -- the speeches, everything."

"President Lehman's speech was brilliant," said Jessica's grandmother Amy Swerdlow, 81, of New York City, a professor emeritus of women's studies at Sarah Lawrence College. "I've been to a lot of graduation services, as a student and a faculty member, and this was by far the best presidential speech. It was inspiring for a woman my age to hear him quote Sartre and Vonnegut, instead of the Bible and Shakespeare."

"Very wonderful," said Jessica's aunt Lisa Swerdlow of New York City, of the ceremony and the weekend.