MENU

Sections

More

July 11, 2025

Centreville Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Centreville

5 News Notes Archives

Compass’Camp New Dawn 2025 Season Slots Still Open

by Leave a Comment

Camper spots and volunteer opportunities are still available for our 31st annual Camp New Dawn, a grief retreat summer camp.  Camp New Dawn is a four-day, three-night retreat held each summer at Camp Pecometh in Centreville.  Camp New Dawn is a grief retreat hosted by Compass for children, teens and families who are struggling with the loss of a loved one. Campers learn healthy coping skills that will benefit them throughout their lives. They engage in group discussions and activities with other kids who have experienced loss and interact with professional grief counselors.

“Grief is isolating on a very natural level. When they show up here, they’re suddenly in this amazing community of people who are on a similar walk,” says Camp New Dawn Director Rhonda Knotts. “Some of the most important things we do as a team is we validate every single feeling they have- good, ugly, bad, hard. We normalize, because grief can make you feel like you’re losing your mind and just like you don’t belong anywhere. The most important thing is we encourage them to remember that they actually have exactly what they need to survive this loss within themselves. When we all come together, we remind each other we’re all survivors.”

A local family shares their journey to healing and how Camp New Dawn helped navigate that healing. In May of 2024, the Willis Family abruptly lost Charles Willis. Jessica Willis, Charles’ daughter, says that Charles was “the foundation of our family.” “I wasn’t sure if Camp New Dawn would be right for us, but I am eternally grateful for my family’s experience there. It was the first time I was able to let go and open up,” she says.

This year’s Camp New Dawn kicks off on Saturday, August 9th at 11:00 am, when our groups arrive at Camp Pecometh.  The campers attend therapeutic workshops, age specific grief support groups and may participate in supervised camp activities such as swimming, fishing, and arts and crafts. The retreat for campers wraps up after the closing ceremony on Monday, August 11th at 4:30 pm.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Washington College Earns High Flyer Status for Bird Conservation

by Leave a Comment

Washington College has successfully renewed its Bird Campus recognition from the Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership, reaching the prestigious High Flyer level. The Bird Campus program recognizes two or four-year colleges and universities committed to reducing threats to birds and actively participating in avian education and research. This achievement underscores the College’s ongoing dedication to environmental stewardship, having completed over 20 action points across four key areas: Habitat, Threats to Birds, Education and Engagement, and Sustainability.

The program is an initiative of the Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership, an expansion of the Bird City Maryland program that began in 2019 to encourage communities to enhance bird environments and educate the public on their contributions to a healthy community. Maryland stands out as the first state to offer a campus recognition program. Washington College initially earned its Bird Campus certification in May 2023, with significant work led by Chesapeake Conservation Corps member Fana Scott. Renewals are required every two years to ensure continued active participation. The town of Chestertown also recently received Bird City certification in October 2024.

“Getting High Flyer status as a Bird Campus from Bird City Maryland is a gratifying public recognition of the work done by Washington College to protect birds and raise awareness around what is needed for continued conservation,” said Maren Gimpel, associate director of Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory at Washington.

As part of the College’s Center for Environment & Society (CES), the Observatory’s primary research focuses on monitoring the seasonal movements of migratory birds between their breeding and wintering areas. Located on the Chester River, a few miles north of Chestertown, MD, the Bird Observatory is nestled in a waterfront refuge on Washington College’s River and Field Campus. The land serves as an important stopover habitat for shorebirds and is home to thousands of migrating and wintering ducks and geese each year.

“From installing Feather Friendly collision deterrents on our buildings to the recognition of our River and Field Campus as an Important Bird Area, to buildings and grounds using Integrated Pest Management to reduce their use of pesticides, choices are being made across our whole campus to improve our environment for birds, and the natural world as a whole so that we all can enjoy its beauty and intrinsic value,” said Gimpel.

The College’s renewed certification highlights a range of impactful initiatives:

Reducing Threats to Birds: Washington College installed Feather Friendly collision deterrents on the porch windows at Semans-Griswold Environmental Hall in 2023, with the remainder of the building treated in August 2024. The Washington College bird club is actively surveying other high-risk collision locations on campus and fundraising for additional treatments. The College also serves as the official test site for the American Bird Conservancy’s bird-safe glass testing program.

Education and Engagement: The Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory and the College’s River and Field Campus have hosted numerous lab classes, local bird club gatherings, and public education events. Faculty members incorporate avian topics into their coursework, and the Center for Environment & Society sponsors a National Audubon Christmas Bird Count each winter as a citizen science initiative.

Habitat Enhancement: The “Flyways Bench,” a functional art piece designed by Artist in Residence Deirdre Murphy, was installed at Semans-Griswold Environmental Hall. It depicts the migration of Least and Caspian Terns, both visible from the bench along the Chester River. The Washington College Campus Garden is a Bay-Wise Certified demonstration site, open to the public to explore best practices in ecological landscaping. Additionally, the entirety of the River and Field Campus was designated a MD-DC Audubon Important Bird Area in 2006, recognized for its large populations of breeding grassland birds like Northern Bobwhite Quail, and wintering/migrating species such as American Woodcock. The campus also earned points for its Tree Campus and Bee Campus certifications.

Sustainability Initiatives: Broader sustainability efforts on campus contributed to the High Flyer status, including a student-led compost team, a Back to Tap program promoting reusable water bottles, a food recovery network, and the campus’s use of integrated pest management by the buildings and grounds department.

“This recognition is a shining example of how the Center for Environment & Society’s  integrated approach to research, experiential learning, and community engagement is making a real impact,” said CES’ Lammot Du Pont Director, Valerie Imbruce. “Our goal has always been to prepare students to become thoughtful stewards of the environment while contributing solutions that improve both ecological health and quality of life. This achievement brings that model to life.”

For a comprehensive list of Washington College’s achievements as a Bird Campus, visit their page on the Bird City Maryland website. You can also learn more about sustainability efforts at Washington.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Watermelon Time By Jamie Kirkpatrick

by Leave a Comment

I spent the Fourth of July weekend with family in Rehoboth. It wasn’t the whole clan, just six adults, four sunny days, delicious meals, and a sandy beach. At one point, one of us—no names will be used here—decided he wanted a watermelon mojito for his evening cocktail. Fortunately, the garden delivered, and so, after a post-beach outdoor shower, it was game on.

Personally, I’m not much of a mojito guy and less of a watermelon mojito guy, but I was intrigued. (Please don’t misunderstand: I have nothing against watermelons. A slice of watermelon with a pinch of salt goes a long way with me on a hot summer day, but mixed in a cocktail…meh.) Anyway, this was the first watermelon I had encountered this summer, and I was glad to see its juicy redness which looked like an old friend that would pair well with a sprig of muddled mint and a shot of rum. Maybe worth a try after all…

Think about watermelons: you’re a kid again and you’e holding a big grin of watermelon. It’s an explosion of color, texture, flavor, and juiciness. Messy, too: you can have a seed-spitting contest while the juice dribbles down your chin, staining your white t-shirt. Who cares? It’s summer and you don’t need a shirt anyway.

These days, watermelons are ubiquitous: they are grown in climes from tropical to temperate and there are literally more than a thousand varieties worldwide. They’re old, too: a few years ago, scientists traced 6,000 year-old watermelon seeds found in the Libyan desert back to an ancestor plant in West Africa. But those first watermelons were tart. It took some savvy Romans to figure out how to breed a sweet, pulpy variety.

Watermelons are technically a large fruit with a hard rind surrounding a modified berry called a pepo. They have a high water content (as much as 91% of a watermelon is water!) and can be stored for eating in dry seasons. They arrived in the New World with the Spanish explorers who settled Florida in the 16th Century. A hundred years later, they had found their way up to New England and down to Central and South America. In the Civil War era, they were often cultivated by free black farmers and became a symbol for the abolition of slavery. Sadly, that symbol of freedom morphed into a racist stereotype during the Jim Crow era. Sigh.

Frida Kahlo’s last painting, completed just days before her death in 1954, depicted varieties of watermelons. (It’s the image that accompanies this Musing.) The painting is a fitting and vibrant conclusion to the artist’s short and tragic life, rich in color contrasts, curves, and angles. It also contains a mournful message from the artist: Kahlo inscribed “Vida la Viva”—“Long Live Life!”— on the central melon wedge at the bottom of the canvas, an ironic commentary on her pain-filled existence due to polio, a terrible bus accident, and multiple surgeries.

But perhaps the message isn’t so mournful after all: maybe the artist is showing us that once our own shell is cut open, it reveals an inner life that is vibrant, fresh, and sweet. Also, the many seeds of the watermelon, like those of the pomegranate in Greek mythology, symbolize fertility and immortality. Once the fruit is gone, the seeds carry the promise of new life forward into eternity.

Like a family.

I like that interpretation.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” hits the market in February, 2026. His website is musingjamie.net.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Call My Name By Laura J. Oliver

by Leave a Comment

If it weren’t for the fact that we have had overlapping lifetimes, I’d think I’m a reincarnation of the celebrated astrophysicist and poet of the cosmos, Carl Sagan. Except that, well, he was a man and could do math.

And his IQ was 170. And he was famous—Like Neil DeGrasse Tyson without the ego. Then there’s the 30 books he authored and the Pulitzer…

Details.

I’m talking about similar sensibilities. Sagan’s work was a hymn to the universe and although he was a scientist and an agnostic, toward the end of his life, he acknowledged with poetic yearning the mysterious possibility that existence transcends the physical.

See? Subtract agnostic and scientist, and same-same! We also shared one very unique experience I’ve told almost no one till now.

Sagan died at 62 of pneumonia, a complication caused by a rare bone marrow disease he’d been fighting for two years. By that time, the man who studied the stars had long been a star, and my astronomy class, which meets on Zoom, was watching a video lecture he had made toward the end of his life.

“My parents died years ago,” Sagan explained. “I was very close to them. I still miss them terribly. I long to believe that their essence, their personalities, what I loved so much about them, are – really and truly – still in existence somewhere.”

Sagan continued, “Sometimes, I dream that I’m talking to my parents, and suddenly – still immersed in the dream – I’m seized by the overpowering realization that they didn’t really die, that it’s all been some kind of horrible mistake. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death. And it’s not the least bit interested in whether there’s any sober evidence for it.”

This from the man who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

I was watching this interview from my office, my microphone muted so the rest of the class wouldn’t hear my black-and-white terrier mix going off like a bottle rocket at every other dog walking by when Sagan shared, in an off-hand way, an inexplicable experience I could relate to.

As the interview wound up, Sagan reported that on at least three distinct occasions in the years since his parents died, he heard them call his name. In their exact voices, clearly and emphatically, not once, not twice, but in three separate instances– “Carl!”  But, although he swore it to be them, rather than explore how that might be possible, he dismissed the experience as a hallucination.

I listened to him negate his experience and thought, I’m glad I’m not your mother. Because isn’t that what parents do? Try to connect with their kids? Get them to pick up the phone? What’s the country code for life from the other side?

“I don’t want to believe,” Sagan said of life beyond physical death, “I want to know.” And yet, he espoused a profound belief that humility is an essential part of scientific inquiry. Sagan would be the first to say, ‘We don’t know what we don’t know.”

Shortly after my grandfather died–the carpenter, the numismatist, the amateur paleontologist, and astronomer— shortly after he was killed on the side of the road almost in front of his home in a hit-and-run accident, I awoke one night in my too-yellow, yellow bedroom on Dutch Ship Court to the sound of my name. Just one word, “Laura,” in a distinctly male voice.

I sat up and saw nothing but the shadow of books by the bed, the door to the hallway standing open, but I felt the mattress at the foot of the bed rise as if someone had just stood. Someone saying goodbye or saying hello?

Figuring out how to test and measure things we can theorize but cannot see is a challenge, such as the search for gravitational waves, black holes, and the Higgs Boson, often called the God Particle. As for how to test for the nature, source, and extent of human consciousness, well, we’re working on it, and until we can, as the man with the IQ of 170 famously said, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

I can’t measure or test my experience, but I don’t dismiss it. The one thing I know for sure is that I share with Carl Sagan the belief that questioning is a form of reverence—a way of honoring the complexity and beauty of the world. He suggested that it takes courage to embrace the unknown, but I would say it takes not courage but trust. Trust that the core of creation is good.

I like to think Carl Sagan’s mother greeted him upon his transition to whatever is next. I can imagine her saying, “For Pete’s sake, Carl, we’ve been calling you!” I like to think that, at last, he had his extraordinary evidence.

I deeply respect Sagan’s agnosticism—his saying, I see no evidence that indicates a divinity, but …I can’t rule out the possibility–as opposed to atheism: an assertion that there’s nothing else and no reason to look. Because certainty assumes we know all there is to know. That strikes me as both naïve and presumptuous.

The theory that life transforms energy states but does not end in no way requires a belief in God. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who once said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller,” was 50/50 on the existence of any divinity and later became a practicing Buddhist. And yet…

One way or another, Carl Sagan now has the evidence he sought, and I hope his experience at the end of his life was full of the same awe he shared as he gave us the stars. An awe similar to Jobs in the hours before he took his last breath. Surrounded by family, he gazed into their eyes, then abruptly looked past them to exclaim,

“Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.”

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

 

 

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Wetlands 101: Sultana Education Foundation Presents an Evening of Interactive Science

by Leave a Comment

The Sultana Education Foundation (SEF) will host its monthly Third Thursday Speaker Series on Thursday, June 19 from 6-7PM when John Mann and Jackie Doerr present Wetlands 101: An Evening of Interactive Science.  The pair of Sultana educators will team up to teach about the vital role that wetlands play in the health of the Chesapeake Bay.  There will be a brief discussion inside the Harwood Nature Center discussing wetlands in general as well as the steps that have been taken to both improve the health of the Lawrence Preserve as well as make it accessible to visitors.  Attendees will then be invited to participate in some of the hands-on science lessons (catching critters, sampling water quality, and walking the trails) that Sultana students enjoy on field trips.

The Lawrence Wetland Preserve is a walk-in facility (no onsite parking) located at 301 South Mill Street in Chestertown.  Visitors are encouraged to park in the public lots on the 300 block of Cannon Street or on the surrounding streets.

These events are free and open to the public.  For more information about the Third Thursday Speaker Series or the Sultana Education Foundation, please visit www.sultanaeducation.org.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

The Salt Leaf (Redux) By Jamie Kirkpatrick

by Leave a Comment

(Author’s note: this is my annual Memorial Day Musing. If you read it before, please read it again. If you haven’t read this before, I hope you’ll think on it.)

 Yesterday was Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer. These days, we tend to celebrate Memorial Day with parades and picnics, fireworks and flags, barbecues and boats. But underneath all the hoopla, there is a somber purpose to Memorial Day. Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day was established during the Civil War to honor all those members of the military who gave their “last full measure of devotion” in service to our country. The essence of Memorial Day is sacrifice.

And so today, I thought we should pause to reconsider the lowly mangrove, that ubiquitous shrub that thrives throughout Florida and in many other tropical climes as well. That the mangrove thrives at all is nothing short of a miracle because it roots in very salty water, water that is, in fact, saline enough to kill most other plant species. So, how does the mangrove survive?

Look closer. Mangrove leaves are a brilliant jade green. But interspersed among all that green finery, there are bright spots of yellow. These are the salt leaves. By a science I do not pretend or presume to understand, these leaves are programmed by Mother Nature to extract enough of the concentrated salt in brackish water to render it sufficiently fresh to nourish the host plant. Theories abound about how this actually works. While some botanists posit that it is the root system of the mangrove that filters as much as 90% of the salt from seawater, thereby providing enough fresh water to feed the plant, other botanists believe that the alchemy of turning salt water into fresh water is done by the salt leaves of the plant. By some evolutionary miracle, each mangrove is programmed to produce a specific number of these leaves, each one capable of excreting an enormous quantity of salt through glands on their surface. In effect, the mangrove’s salt leaves sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the host. I like that second theory a lot.

Years ago, I spent a morning trying to count the number of salt leaves on one mangrove. It was a futile effort. The roots of a mangrove ecosystem are so intertwined that it is impossible to distinguish one plant from another, and anyway, after a while, they all began to look alike. So I did the next best thing: I estimated. Best guess? Maybe one leaf in a thousand is a salt leaf. Even if I’m off by a factor of ten, that’s still quite a burden for a single tiny yellow leaf to bear.

Yesterday, on the last Monday in May, we observed yet another Memorial Day. It’s the only day of the year when we officially remember and honor all the men and women who were, and are, our nation’s salt leaves. It is through their sacrifice that the rest of us are blessed to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

There is another interesting aspect to the mangrove: locals say it “walks.” Thanks to all  those yellow salt leaves, as the mangrove thrives, its root systems spread. Silt collects among those new roots, and eventually new land begins to form, land that becomes host and home to an amazing variety of new plants and animals. Life begetting life.

Honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Thank the salt leaves.

I’ll be right back.

 

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

They Died for our Country: Most were 18, 19 and 20 By Aubrey Sarvis

by Leave a Comment

Tall, sharp guidons leading lean troops in starched parade dress on U. S. military installations, preparing to honor their fallen; and in mid-size cities and hundreds of small towns across America winsome majorettes and marching bands, some a bit ragtag in need of new uniforms, eager to strut their stuff.  And near big cities, up and down both coasts, loud punk and rock and roll in huge roaring stadiums, vaping and doping; crowded beaches with umbrellas and coolers; major league baseball, hot dogs and cold beer; and, for those who like it less frenetic, softball, golf, and tennis.

Along the Chesapeake Bay near the Naval Academy a handful of patriotic young and middle-aged weekend sailors will gather again to remember. Hopefully, this Memorial Day many will pause to remember.

They were killed in stinking trenches along the Western Front in France and Belgium.  They battled dysentery and other crippling diseases for weeks before the end finally came — whizzing machine gun fire, poison and mustard gas, and, for some, bloody hand-to hand combat. Remember the 116,516 killed in action (KIA) in WW1.

At Pear Harbor 2,403 U. S. sailors and soldiers and marines were surprised and killed; and 1,177 sailors went down with the USS Arizona, most engulfed by fires and water when the battleship was ripped asunder by magazines and munitions.

After months fighting in the Battle of Bataan, American POWs were yanked out of notorious POW Camps in the Philippines and forcibly transferred to the Bataan Death March during which 650 American POWs perished from lack of food, malaria, deliberate cruelty, and wanton killings. Remember our POWS.

Thousands of GIs were killed and wounded In North Africa, Sicily, Anzio, Normandy. Poland, Germany, and Great Britian. Remember.

Young GIs fought and died in rice paddies and on long narrow frozen hilltops and mountain ranges along the 38th parallel in Korea. MASH ((Medical Army Surgical Hospital) Unit 825, the 47th Surgical Field Hospital) saved my Uncle Jim “Pee Wee” Gainey Clark when he was badly wounded in combat. Many did not survive in Unit 825.  A decade later in another Southeast Asia country, another generation of young GIs fought and died in rice paddies near Da Nang, Pleiku, Hue, and along the Ho Chi Minh supply trail.

Do not forget the 58,220 who came home in caskets draped with brand-new American flags. Perhaps you saw a wood shipping casket being unloaded from a train freight car and carefully placed on a sturdy baggage cart and then slowly, respectfully rolled along the train platform to where the stunned family was waiting, baggage porters a few feet back standing at attention, red caps removed. During the sixties and early seventies baggage handlers bore witness to scores of military home comings.

And in no time, or so it seemed, our country turned the page and old men and a few women in Washington in high places were once again sending young men to fight and die in faraway places.  Suddenly 250,000 U. S. wartime troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Improvised explosives devices (IEDs).  Roadside bombings and deadly Humvees. The maimed and disfigured and missing body parts. And 6,522 KIA.

Most of the killed in action we remember today were young, 18, 19, and 20. A few 17. Notwithstanding their courage and medals, I’m pretty sure of two things I can tell you about them.

They were all afraid, and they did not want to die.

In my family, Clarks and Geralds and Sarvises served in the Army, Navy, and Air Force during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Three of my uncles served in Korea. My favorite uncle, A. L. Clark, fought in Korea in late 1950 and 1951.  A farm boy and unassuming marksman, he wasn’t wounded by enemy fire, but he carried the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, and his buddies killed on those hills with him, until the week he died in South Carolina.

Clark and his buddies fought in the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. Initially, A. L. and his company didn’t comprehend what was happening nor the magnitude of what their unit was up against. The surprised 32nd was trapped with two other battalions of the 7th. Over 200,000 Chinese soldiers had stormed down from Manchuria to stop General Douglas McArthur and the UN forces. McArthur had badly underestimated the Chinese strength level at Yalu as well as the enemy’s determination to fight. Few of the soldiers my uncle fought with in the 32nd Infantry came out of Chosin alive. Uncle A.L. had arrived near the Chosin Reservoir with three scattered companies.  He was 1 of 181 soldiers who left the basin alive.  Many soldiers were lost or missing; some of the half-alive had to be left behind in the minus 30 degrees hills.

This week I remember soldiers and Marines in the “Forgotten War” at Chosin who did not get out alive.  Over 70 years have passed and still some Chosin family members remember, and search for their loved ones.

Two recent posts below from the online Korean War Project tell you why:

Announcement:  Funeral for my father Master Sergeant James Lee Quong missing Chosin Reservoir for 72 years set by Department of the Army at Arlington Cemetery, June 2, 2022, 10AM, Section 60.  He will be honored by caisson transportation with full military honors.  Bag pipes requested.

Subject: Hansel M. Ragner.Looking for my dad. He was deployed with the 32nd Inf, 7th Div.  We believed he served from 1950 to 1951 at the Chosin Reservoir and was stranded with the last of his men behind enemy lines.

Today I remember Hansel Ragner.

And let us remember today the Gold Star families who lost a son or daughter or brother or sister serving our country. With gratitude we honor the entire family and their loved one.

From Gettysburg to Petersburg, from Bataan to Beirut, from Seoul to Saigon, from Pleiku to Fallujah, and Kandahar too, let us remember.  Let us remember all who fought and died so we might be free.

Aubrey Sarvis

Army Veteran, 32nd Infantry, 7th Division, 1961-1962.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Washington College Commencement Recap

by Leave a Comment

“Under a bright spring sky, Washington College celebrated the 209 members of the graduating Class of 2025. The event was a vibrant culmination of years of hard work, discovery, and community building, filled with inspiring speeches and heartfelt congratulations. While the broader political and economic landscape cast a shadow of concern for the first class to have attended courses in-person all four years since the Covid-19 pandemic, the day was primarily marked by joyous celebration of academic achievement and the promise of new beginnings.”

For a complete recap of the commencement proceedings from Sunday as well as Jonathan Karl’s keynote address, go here.

(Text and images form Washington College News & Media Relations)

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.