Marina Smith walks up to the stage to accept the Faculty Award, which was presented by Assistant Principal Laura Moore. “She loves to connect with others and wants to inspire change, and be the voice for those who do not have one,” said Moore. “Her peers voted her most likely to change the world.” Photo by Fallon Forbush.
Five hundred two graduates received their high school diplomas during Langley High School’s commencement ceremony at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, June 15.
The ceremony raised a range of emotions and a celebrated alumna came back to town to offer words of wisdom for her alma mater’s newest batch of budding adults.
Andrew Craver, the class of 2017 Student Government Association vice president, welcomed the audience and congratulated his peers to begin the ceremony. He also took a moment to mention a classmate who was missing from the celebration: Matthew Vernon Poyner.
Poyner died unexpectedly on Feb. 24, 2015, in his sleep of acute viral myocarditis, which is the inflammation of the myocardium heart muscle.
“This year, we raised over $7,000 for the Matthew Vernon Poyner Memorial Foundation,” Craver said to loud applause.
The charity organization is dedicated to honoring and preserving Poyner’s legacy by awarding scholarships to college-bound seniors at area high schools; supporting the Warrior Canine Connection and its mission to help combat veterans through canine therapy; and supporting the work of the Johns Hopkins Medicine myocarditis research team to develop early detection and treatment of myocarditis through a fund established in Poyner’s name.
Following the Pledge of Allegiance led by SGA Class of 2017 Representative Kareem Al-Attar and the national anthem sang by the Langley High School Madrigals, SGA Class of 2017 Representative Colin Dunne led the hall in a moment of silence and remembrance for “those who could not be with us today,” he said.
THE OCCASION continued with the introduction of the keynote speaker from the school’s class of 1984: alumna Lauren Graham.
Graham is a well-known author, actor and producer most recognized for her role as Lorelai Gilmore on the popular TV series “Gilmore Girls,” which she reprised in a reunion miniseries on Netflix in 2016.
She talked to the students about a time before she was famous, before she appeared on Broadway, before she became a New York Times best-selling author and before she was nominated for Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards.
She spoke of the early ’80s when she was navigating the hurdles and social trappings of high school. At the time, she said that she knew she wanted to be an actor, participating in the school’s musical theater program all four years.
This path was not a steady climb.
As a freshman, she was cast as townsperson No. 3 in the school’s spring musical “Li’l Abner.”
“As townspeople, we were taught by our teacher that an easy way to look like we were genuinely conversing with one another was to mouth the words, ‘rutabaga, rutabaga,’ while nodding and clapping and smiling when we weren’t singing,” Graham said. “For fun, a few of us occasionally went totally rogue with an unsanctioned, ‘watermelon, watermelon,’” she added.
Sophomore year, she landed a speaking part in the musical “Anything Goes” and was also asked to understudy for a senior who was playing the lead role of Reno Sweeney.
“I was thrilled and I worked hard with a voice teacher,” she said. “I listened to the Broadway cast recording and tried my best to copy every single thing that Patti LuPone did on the album.”
She would only stand in during a rehearsal while the senior was away for a chorale concert, she said.
Graham’s big break came when she was cast as Dolly Levi in the musical “Hello, Dolly!” her junior year.
“That year, of course, I copied most of my performance from the Barbra Streisand movie version,” she said.
After standing ovations for all of her performances in the lead role, auditions eventually rolled around for the musical the school would be performing during her senior year: “Once Upon a Mattress.”
“There were not one, but two great leading roles,” Graham said. “Friends rolled their eyes when I expressed any anxiety. They said, ‘Please, it’s just which role are you going to get. It’s the only question.’”
It was not the only question—by far.
“I opened my mouth and I was off,” she said as she recalled her audition. “The key was wrong, my voice squeaked and I just lost it. I finished the song but I never really recovered.”
She was not cast in a leading role nor a role that sang.
“It was a speaking part, but I don’t even think my character had a name,” she said.
She felt embarrassed and her friends felt embarrassed for her.
Her self-described “senior slump” continued the night of the first performance when she slid on ice on Georgetown Pike. She was fine but her car had to be towed and she was driven to the school in a police car.
Her teacher asked if she was OK to perform and she began to feel a sense of relief, imagining not performing or facing the embarrassment of her downgraded part. That’s when she felt a tap on her shoulder from Jenny, “a pretty blonde sophomore” who didn’t have a speaking role.
“She said, ‘Lauren, I heard what happened. I’m so sorry. I just want you to know if you can’t do the show tonight’ … and then she paused and her eyes narrowed and she got like a killer look … she’s like, ‘I know all your lines.’”
Quickly, Graham snapped out of her funk.
“Suddenly, I was OK … looking into Jenny’s eyes, I saw ambition and fire and maybe just a little bit of greed,” she said.
To Graham, her small role was a demotion, but it was an opportunity worth fighting for to Jenny.
“Maybe that’s the way things always are,” she told the graduates. “You don’t own the heights any more than you do the lows. An experience that’s unpleasant to you may be someone else’s dream next step. One thing is guaranteed: Neither state is personal to you; they’re both just a part of life. No matter what, you’re bound to experience both extremes.”
Graham continued to philosophize.
OUT IN THE REAL WORLD, like on the Saxon Stage, she has had successes and slumps as “the girl who has the lead and the girl who wishes she had a bigger part,” she told the graduates. “The secret is they’re not that different from one another. They don’t feel that different. The difference is not in what life brings you, it’s truly in how you choose to handle it.”
Graham admitted she was far from focused on her future when she sat in her cap and gown in 1984, telling the crowd that the envelope she received during her commencement just had a blank piece of paper inside, her diploma held hostage until she paid her long overdue library fines.
“The most thrilling event looming was not college or my summer internship, but the fact that I had been invited to the graduation after party that night at Jacky’s house,” she said.
Jacky, Graham said, was a popular classmate who was always throwing parties while her parents were out of town.
“I had never been invited to Jacky’s house before,” she said. “I didn’t even think she knew who I was.”
Later that night, she told the crowd, she sat on the hood of a football player’s green Ford Bronco while sipping a purple wine cooler as everyone mingled.
Though she eventually achieved the dreams she had dreamt in high school, it wasn’t without its challenges. An example she gave was when she appeared on Broadway as Miss Adelaide in the revival of the musical “Guys and Dolls” in 2009.
Graham wasn’t a dancer, but her character was, so she struggled with choreography and audiences were both hot and cold, she said.
“Within just one week of performances, I cycled through the same waves I’d experienced in high school,” she said. “Certain nights felt dreamy and joyous and others felt like senior slump.”
She avoided reading the negative critics, until she walked into a deli where she came face-to- with a photo of her and a cast member on the front of a publication staring at her from a newsstand bearing the headline, “Guys and Dulls,” she said.
“It was so awful,” she said. “I jumped away from the paper like it was on fire.”
The entire experience wasn’t anything close to her childhood dream of performing on Broadway, but she didn’t pout, she said.
“All I could do was try to stay positive for myself and all of the Jennies out there who hoped to one day stand in those shoes,” she said.
She told the graduates that enjoying life isn’t about successes, but rather satisfaction is when people love what they do.
“Maybe it’s not theater for you,” she said. “Maybe it’s baseball or writing or coding, but whatever path you choose; the important thing is you keep finding your joy in what you’re doing, especially when the joy is not finding you.”