Groton salutes ‘phenomenal’ Form of 2025 at school’s 140th Prize Day

As if the sun insisted on shining for the Form of 2025, an overcast morning gave way to blue skies just as the students left St. John’s Chapel to the ring of church bells and began the school’s 140th Prize Day on June 1.  

The graduates’ family, friends, and fellow students joined with faculty, staff, and distinguished guests in gathering for remarks from Board of Trustees President Ben Pyne ’77, P’12, ’15, Headmaster Temba Maqubela, student speaker Max Fan ’25, and the event’s keynote speaker, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, PhD.

Mr. Pyne extended a welcome to all gathered from himself and the Board of Trustees, and encouraged the Form of 2025 to focus on the importance of strong character and small gestures.

“When I was your age, I always assumed that big gestures—impressive titles, important jobs—were the only way to have an impact, and to make a difference,” said Mr. Pyne. “While there is a certain truth that the bigger the platform, the bigger the potential impact, it doesn’t always start that way, or end up that way. Who you are, how you live your lives and interact with others—even in the smallest ways—can have an outsize impact.” 

Mr. Maqubela praised the “phenomenal” Form of 2025, a special group that genuinely took joy in caring for each other and doing their duties as senior students.

“It was the first form that I said the words, ‘I love you’ to,” he said, “because they loved each other.”  

Graduate Max Fan was elected by his fellow Sixth Formers to represent them as class speaker. A talented pianist who recently performed with the Boston Pops as a winner of the Fidelity Investments Young Artists competition, Max began his remarks by joking that he was more accustomed to appearing behind a keyboard than a microphone: “Mr. Maqubela, I thought I was supposed to be playing piano today!”

It was a doubly special day for Max, who was celebrating his birthday in addition to graduation. In a lighthearted speech, Max called back on fond and funny memories with many of his formmates from throughout their time on the Circle, and talked about how lucky they were to have been here together. 

“It’s so hard to comprehend sometimes that this place is real,” he said. “Not only the nature, but the people here. Where else in the world do you find a collection of high schoolers with such diverse backgrounds who are so uniquely positioned to succeed in so many fields?”

A member of Groton’s tennis team, Max also cited a book written by members of the Form of 2011 and former tennis captains, Ken Ballato and Ted Leonhardt, called Divine Fire, that was given to him by tennis coach and longtime Spanish faculty member John Conner. In it, Ballato and Leonhardt profile twenty-four notable Groton alumni and use their commonalities to piece together what makes the Groton education special.  

“What Ken and Ted found about Groton graduates as a whole was the namesake of their book,” said Max. “Energetic, optimistic, and confident, Groton graduates pursue their careers and policies on behalf of the nation emboldened by a ‘Divine Fire’ that seemed to be burning in their breasts.

“To the phenomenal Form of 2025, I ask you: What will you do with your Divine Fire?” Max added in closing. “As our flame spreads across the world, I urge you to remember the lessons we learned here—ideas can come from individual genius, but it takes collective courage to realize them. Your Divine Fire isn’t just a flame you carry—it’s a torch to pass. 

“Keep lighting up rooms when you enter them. Build ramps for others to soar over obstacles. Create spaces where ideas can be discussed. And where the grass is greener than the Circle in May. And when you’re thinking to yourself many years from now, whatever corner you find yourself in the world, remember this: We’ve spent our past two, three, four, five years together in something close to paradise. And together we left it shining even brighter. So, the phenomenal Form of 2025, take our fire and set the cosmos aglow. Let’s go change the world.”

Dr. Brinkley, who holds the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, has written extensively on U.S. presidents, including two landmark works on perhaps Groton’s most esteemed graduate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt A’1900: Rightful Heritage and FDR and the Creation of the United Nations. 

“You can’t deal with American history, period, without Franklin D. Roosevelt,” he said. 

As someone with polio, Roosevelt struggled with the physical and psychological aspects of the disease, but Dr. Brinkley said he never lost hope and urged the graduates to do the same.

“You should all be optimistic,” he said. “FDR said optimism in America is our oxygen.” 

Special guests included Groton’s sixth headmaster Bill Polk ’58, FTR ’78–’03 and past and present members of the Board of Trustees. 

In sending the graduates out into their new world, Mr. Maqubela implored them to seek positivity before invoking the Zulu phrase first used by Mr. Polk that now closes Prize Day.

“As we say in chemistry: Go and become nucleophiles,” he said. “The world needs you to do the greater good. Humanity needs you. Go well!”

See more photos from Prize Day.