Thank you - Mr. Domino, Chair of the Regis Board, Trustees, Fr ...

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John Balletta 2 Class of 2012 Graduation Address Memory number two. It was a Cloudless August night just before junior year, on the last day of REACH @ Regis. After working for most of July and August at REACH, David Vargas, Mike Rogers and I decided to indulge ourselves and take a visit to the green roof. I’d ask our Dean, Mr. D, to now don his earmuffs for this particular memory. Right before we were scheduled to have our REACH counselor dinner at Jackson Hole Diner, we got into the elevator and hit R. We reached the top and slowly began our tour around the roof. I remember looking out across the buildings and just glimpsing the MetLife logo. I recall gazing up into the night and seeing the stars, the first time I had ever seen them in the city. At that moment, we all felt that this place, at the top of our school, was the most beautiful spot in the world. Key and final memory: a couple of weeks ago, after a Lower Gym basketball game with Mr. Carroll, after baseball practice, after the day of my last Regis test. I was tired. I was sweaty. I had a bus to catch and, believe it or not, I still had Calculus homework to do. But I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to leave Regis, even after the 5 o’clock bell, even after most of the teachers and students had already departed. I felt compelled to stay. I felt at home. All of my other memories are summed up in that moment. That moment inspired my answer to the barber’s question: why will I miss Regis? Because, more than once, Regis felt like home. Because home can be the place where we rest our heads at night and home can be a quadrangle, a green roof, the Tunnel. Home can be the Midnight Run van, Jamaica or Belize, or our service sites. It can be a beat-up baseball or soccer field on Randall’s Island or a brand new gym built up from ashes (or Xavier’s gym, built up from Timmy Petriccione’s 3-pointers). It can be Icahn or the Armory, a stage or a debate tournament, a retreat in Riverdale, a retreat in Kenya, or a retreat within the walls of our own school. Home can be a classroom, a cafeteria, a conference room, a resource center, a lecture hall, a lab, a locker room or a library… well, sometimes the library. 55 East 84 th Street may technically be the address of a school, but for us it and everything connected to it represent so much more. It’s our second home. Let’s ask ourselves once more, “why?” Why can we feel at home at Regis? Why do we feel such an attractive pull towards a place where we are taught for a mere four years of our lives, a place that is for some of us over two hours away, a place without any girls? I would say some of the most important reasons for our attachment are the men and women who do the teaching. To the faculty and administration: your tests stressed us out, your homework kept us up late, you sometimes went so far as to use all sixty minutes of an hour-long class, and we
John Balletta 3 Class of 2012 Graduation Address would not have had it any other way. Learning from you, both by the contents of your classes and most importantly by the contents of your characters, has far exceeded any of our sacrifices. We may forget that hydrogen bounds occur with fluorine, oxygen and nitrogen. We may forget verb conjugations and William Jennings Bryan. We all desperately want to forget everything remotely related to Physics and PreCalc. But we will never forget the unrelenting devotion you show to your students, your availability and openness, your kindness and commitment. You have always been there for us, in every capacity and in every way. You have left an indelible mark in our hearts, and for this we express our deepest gratitude. To speak about the Regis experience is to also acknowledge the many sacrifices our families have made in our first home. It is immeasurably difficult to be a Regis parent or guardian. No doubt the first week of freshman year was filled with great sighs of relief and praise to the Lord when our short text-message, “here,” arrived to your phones each morning. We will send you one more message today. To our families: today we celebrate our successful departure from our second home, but in a couple of months we will also be departing, again, from you. You have always been our biggest fans. For 18 years, you have guided us and formed us into the mature young men in this church today. Looking around at my classmates, I know that you have done an impeccable job. To you, families and loved ones, and especially to those that touched our lives but were not able to be with us today, we are deeply indebted. Our most fervent hope is that we have made you proud and that we will continue to do so. Saving the best for last, I have yet to name the quintessential aspect of what makes Regis a second home for so many of us. To my classmates: the geniuses, like Robbie Flatow, who can invent and develop a historical fantasy baseball calculator; the linguists, like Chris Siemer, who can compose an original mythological play – in Latin; the caregivers, like John Murray, who go above and beyond our call to be “Men for Others;” the… people who can only be described like Mike Woods, who can play three sports just as well as they can speak German and play Nintendo 64; the jokesters, like Arthur Imperatore, who, instead of a calculator, have the wit to request James Woodall for math exams; the musicians, like Albert Quizon, who could bring Chopin to tears of joy; the runners, like Ryan Phillips, who already bring Coach Donodeo to tears of joy; the debaters, like James Elustondo, with the political awareness to watch Herman Cain’s dropout speech in which he quoted a line from Pokémon 2000 and those, like Devin Bergstein, with the audacity to shamelessly declare “Oh, I love that movie!”; the actors, like Steve Ruse, who can discuss like a thesis the logical inconsistencies of the spell in Beauty and the Beast; the athletes, like Will and Jack Salter, with the dominance to
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Thank you - Mr. Domino, Chair of the Regis Board, Trustees, Fr ...

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