James Vanderbilt ’94 delivered a personal, insightful Baccalaureate Address to the Form of 2026
June 11, 2026
Graduates mark the culmination of their St. Paul’s experience with reflections on adaptability, purpose, and the enduring power of human connection.
BY KRISTIN DUISBERG
Baccalaureate speaker James Vanderbilt ’94 reflected on the opportunities that came his way when life went a different direction than the one he’d imagined for himself when he left St. Paul’s School. In his Graduation remarks, Student Council President Henry Wilson ’26 read from a letter he wrote in eighth grade that outlined a vision for high school that didn’t look at all the way he spent his four years at St. Paul’s. The theme of adaptability also came into play when the weather precipitated a few venue changes at the beginning of Graduation Weekend, May 30 and 31 — and yet the Graduation of the Form of 2026 was, like the experiences Vanderbilt and Wilson described, in some ways richer for the pivot: two days of connection and presence for the form’s 130 students and their families that might have started with cold rain, but ended with a traditional rose toss that took place under a bright blue sky.
Leaning into the form’s theme of presence in her address, Fourteenth Rector Kathy Giles asked the graduating students to consider what it would mean to be present in the world beyond St. Paul’s. “The ubiquity of phones, screens, headphones, and earbuds may feel like an early relief from the rules at school,” she said. “But maybe you will miss the talking and thinking and observing that happens when you unplug yourself — unless you choose to do it anyway. … You know how to greet, how to connect, how to be unselfish in friendship in even the smallest measure of connection — holding the door, acknowledging someone in an elevator — because you know how to make a connection that conveys respect and dignity to others. The greater good can be made greater by the smallest of actions. We’ve all seen you do it.”
Wilson’s remarks followed a complementary thread as he encouraged his formmates to be open to changes in their paths and to embrace the original intent of the phrase carpe diem. “Carpe diem never even meant ‘seize the day.’ The phrase most directly translates to ‘pluck the day.’ Not seize it. Not conquer it. Not optimize it,” he said. “The difference matters. In so many moments … activities can stop being experiences we live and start becoming accomplishments we collect. It stops mattering what something feels like — only what it adds up to.”
Plucking, he explained, is more like the act of walking up to a tree and being open to accepting whichever of the many ripe fruits is ready to fall into your hand. “[W]hat I hope our time at SPS has taught us is simple: Stay open, stay attentive, pluck the day. As young adults, we are building purposeful lives in service to the greater good. But that purpose doesn’t need to be apparent in the plan — it almost always appears in the process. … In 50 years, we will just be names on a wall. Students will walk past us every day without knowing who we were, what awards we won, or what plans we once made. But if we have done this right, they will feel the legacy of how we lived here.”
Even as Wilson turned the lens on the generations of students who would succeed his form, Giles noted that their connection to SPS would include many opportunities to look at the School shield in the years to come. “As you do so, I hope you will remember [Fourth Rector] Dr. Drury’s one-sentence explanation of our DNA as a school and community: ‘The book is a menace without the sword of service, and the sword of service tends to egotism without the bird of sacrifice.’ … [T]his balanced trifecta is worth your ongoing consideration over the coming years and decades of your life. When you see the shield, remind yourself that you know what it stands for, and what, we hope, you stand behind.”
As young adults, we are building purposeful lives in service to the greater good. But that purpose doesn’t need to be apparent in the plan — it almost always appears in the process.
— Henry Wilson ’26
Graduation Weekend began with a Friday night Spring Concert featuring the talents of the School’s chamber and a cappella groups, symphony orchestra, and jazz ensemble. Saturday morning began with the Halcyon-Shattuck club crew races and awards, followed by the Latin Play, “Menaechmi,” put on by Classical Honors students. The full School community gathered in Matthes Cage on Saturday afternoon for a Graduation Awards ceremony to honor students’ academic, athletic, and community achievements, after which Sixth Formers and their families heard from Hollywood film director, screenwriter, and producer Vanderbilt before the soon-to-be graduates processed down Library Road en route to their Sixth Form dinner. In their final evening together as students and in advance of Sunday’s Graduation Exercises, the members of the form of 2026 gathered in the Chapel of St. Paul for an emotional Last Night Service, emerging into the dark to share hugs and tears with the younger students who will follow in their footsteps and on unexpected paths of their own.
