May 4, 2012
I get on a plane at BWI tomorrow morning to begin the 33-hour journey home to New Zealand. It will be my first visit in about five and a half years. My siblings and I will be celebrating Mom's 80th birthday. Between starting and completing a doctorate and taking on a new job, the years have added up and, as excited as I am, part of me wonders with all that time passed, what will Mom and Dad look like? How will they be? What will home be like? And, having lived away from New Zealand for 25 years, just how many "homes" do I have?
One of my homes is right here at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School. I'm not talking about the hours in the building, though there are plenty of those. Home is where you belong, where you feel bonded, and where, as poet Robert Frost said, "When you have to go there, they have to take you in." Our school has been a home to students for more than 50 years and last week the depth of that connection was demonstrated beautifully to our student body.
We awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award to Al Checchi '66. Al was a superstar as a student – a leader in academics, football, the newspaper, and student government. He went on to Amherst and Harvard Business School and experienced a meteoric rise in the business world, owning and serving as co-Chairman of Northwest Airlines while only in his early 40's. He later ran for Governor of California (look to the next issue of The Counselor for more on Al).
We invited Al's classmates to join us for the awards assembly. Forty-six years removed from Good Counsel, Al was joined by ten of his classmates from 1966. They flew in from as far away as Illinois, Maine and Florida. Along with today's students, they heard Al speak of the importance of leadership and describe the link between the person he is now and the remarkable formative influence of his four years with the Xaverian Brothers on Georgia Avenue.
After the ceremony, several students came up to introduce themselves to Al. His message resonated powerfully with young people eager to mark a mark on the world. Al tried, unsuccessfully, to give the students the rest of the day off. Hopefully our students were able to think about the message from one of their own, a fellow Falcon and a regular guy who grew up in Silver Spring. Al provided a vision of all that is possible built on the foundation of academic learning, lasting relationships, and robust values provided at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School.
At the luncheon following the awards, I saw and heard more from Al and his classmates about the strength of those relationships. Even when they had not seen one another in years, picking up again didn't seem too hard at all.
For all our students, young and old, Good Counsel seeks to be such a special place – belonging, bonded, feeling at "home."