It’s graduation season. The New York Times, my daily addiction, has been quoting snippets from memorable graduation speeches that have been delivered this year to students eager to get on — to different schools and colleges, or the world, putting to the test what they have learned in those years of early morning labs, term papers, internships, and final exams.

The lofty statements and the photos of proud families send my thoughts back several decades — to my years as a feature writer for a community newspaper in Westchester County. Among other assignments for the paper, I was the writer sent each year to cover high school graduation, searching each time to identify singular distinctions within the sameness of the event I had covered countless times before.

Clearly, some graduation ceremonies are singular. A May 1986 college graduation my spouse and I had attended that year was certainly one of them, as was the June high school graduation yet to come — two proud parental moments, one of them meshed with my annual assignment.

There we were that warm June afternoon, my husband and I sitting elbow-to-elbow in the bleachers with other proud parents enjoying the proud moment. And there she was, the baby of the family who, with the other youngsters on our quiet street had spent her preschool years riding a tricycle from Mrs. Sperry’s house at the crest of the hill to the Rothchilds house at the bottom, never daring to venture out into the vast world that lay around the corner on Brite Avenue.

With kindergarten came the security to navigate the winding route from Brite Avenue to Sage Terrace and Putnam Road to Greenacres School. Along the way, from the alphabet to the senior term paper, she embraced her firsts — her first homework assignment and mid-term exam, her first book report, a role in a class play, her first track meet, her first college interview. And we ticked off our lasts: our last school picnic, our last high school open house, our last high school graduation.

There is an endearing photo in my office of a baby girl clutching a piece of cake in her hand, a cake made with loving hands by her big sister, using her Easy-Bake Oven. The child’s mouth is smeared with chocolate icing, and those marine-blue eyes ringed in a darker, jewel-toned blue are dancing impishly. Today her eyes are underlined with a makeup pencil and accented with shadow, her mouth colored not with chocolate but with lip gloss.

That was then, and this is now, when I, too, am graduating. After three proud years as the president of Congregation Tifereth Israel and its Board of Directors, I will step aside for new faces and fresh ideas to lead our beloved shul. As a graduate, I, too, can tick off some firsts: My first board and Congregation meetings; my first Rosh Hashanah address to the Congregation; my first and most delightful one-on-one with the late Rabbi Myron Fenster, who served our congregation so graciously at the time. Similarly, my lasts: My last trip to the bimah to deliver Shabbat announcements; my last official welcome to visitors to our shul; and this, my last Shofar message as the President.

With a full heart in my valedictory address, I thank my board and this congregation for the honor to have been chosen to lead this shul for the last three years. We have met goals we set for ourselves; we have innovated programs; and we have weathered differences that, sadly, have brought about strife among our members. Through it all, although still unfolding, we have flourished with perseverance and dignity, and we have maintained the warm, communal soul that makes this shul a singular, distinctive, a welcoming spiritual home for all of us.

I wish well our new president and the new and returning officers and directors, and I look forward to their leadership as we embrace new beginnings.

Those June graduations in 1986, as well as this shul graduation in June 2026 hold the stuff of high drama and, correspondingly, tender emotional responses.

—Sara Bloom