CLAREMONT — Twenty-five years ago this month, Tori Vicsik took the stage at her Stevens High graduation ceremony and sang, “Letting Go,” which she had heard country singer Suzy Bogguss perform at a fair a year earlier.
“I just thought it would be really great for graduation and it was,” said Vicsik, who is now Tori Hollis, an educator in Colorado and the mother of a daughter in college and a son in high school.
Music has remained important in her life — Hollis was a music teacher for 13 years before becoming a literacy interventionist at a school about 30 miles north of Denver. And she remembers the basement music room at Stevens High, where the instruments echoed throughout the school.
“I was in band and choir all four years, and I always remember just loving music,” Hollis said.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of today’s graduates have to celebrate virtually, or via car caravans. But the 1995 graduations in the Upper Valley were live and in person.
Kieran Campion, a future actor who appeared in episodes of CSI Miami and The Sopranos and is now a theatrical agent near Chicago, feigned nervousness while addressing classmates at Hanover High School.
The late Kedra Greaves, then 75 and an organist and choir director at churches in the Woodstock area, played the organ at the Hartford High School graduation.
And President Bill Clinton attended Dartmouth’s commencement, where he spoke of the importance of global engagement and education.
“You can come down in many places on all these debates in Washington and around the country, but it is self-evident that unless people in this country, wherever they come from, whatever their race or economic standing or region, can make the most of their own lives, whatever is in there — the magic inside all of us— we will not fulfill our common destiny,” Clinton told Dartmouth graduates.
That same trip, Clinton met in Claremont with Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich in an effort to ease the partisan divide.
Hollis, herself, hoped to come back to Claremont this month, both for her 25th reunion and to attend a nephew’s graduation from Stevens High. On top of that, her mother, New London resident Peg Nelson, is celebrating her retirement after 30 years as a teacher in the Kearsarge and Claremont school districts.
But because of the travel restrictions from the coronavirus, Hollis, and thousands of other 1995 graduates, have had to put reunion plans on hold. Hollis last week had just ended teaching by Zoom for the spring semester and was ready to get back in an actual classroom.
“I miss my students and I’m really excited to get back to school in the fall,” she said.
News staff writer John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.