71. Candlelighting from the Wings

Candlelighting evokes a range of emotions in participants, from the solemnity of the youngest students to alumni returning after decades away. Theater Department Chair Robert Sloan takes it all in from the wings, where he watches with cue sheet in hand and fire extinguisher at his feet.

For thirty years I have had the unique perspective of watching Candlelighting from the theater wings, sitting next to the piano, cue sheet in hand, fire extinguisher by my feet. In that time, there have been several candles that have inexplicably fallen, a few that just went out, some flubbed lines, a few stumbles, and several tears, usually from alumni coming back who are suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of unexpected emotion prompted either by a resurgence of feeling for the school or, perhaps, an all-too-vivid window into their own mortality walking on the same stage they did when they were twenty-five or forty or even fifty years younger. This surge of genuine emotion is even more poignant given the impenetrable, vaguely druidic, borderline nonsensical Candlelighting Poem at the center of the ceremony. The First Program kids are the true stars, of course. And one can see across those few years a remarkable transformation, from the impossibly cute kindergartener’s deep determination to execute, however haltingly, this sacred duty to the already cavalier third grader, who’s already begun to exude a burgeoning sense of being too cool for all this. But what’s most poignant about my many years of coordinating the Candlelighting and Arch Day Ceremonies is being part of a tradition that goes back to the Dalton’s inception and though I am no longer impossibly cute, I do feel a deep determination to execute this duty.
—Robert Sloan Middle and High School Theater Teacher, Theater Department Chair