Mayfield Senior School: Celebrating the Class of 2021

Article and Photos courtesy of MAYFIELD SENIOR SCHOOL JUNE 10, 2021

It was a magical weekend on the Mayfield Senior School campus. With the Baccalaureate Mass on Saturday and the Graduation on Sunday, the events had the “pinch-me-am-I-dreaming” kind of quality. It has been over a year of challenges and pivots–with students, families, and faculty/staff always adjusting to the many adaptations that have come our way. But at long last, we were able to celebrate the extraordinary Class of 2021. Rev. Chris Cartwright S.J. presided over the Baccalaureate Liturgy, and directly after that, students received all manner of awards, the fruits of their many labors. And at Graduation, Mayfield was overjoyed to welcome our Commencement Speaker Liesl Pike Moldow ’83–the Co-Founder of “SafeSpace”–a youth-led non-profit that has been changing the discussion about teens and mental health since 2016.

What can Mayfield Senior School (MFS) say about the Class of 2021? The experiences they have lived through have made them wise far beyond their years. In her speech, Senior Class President Jolie B. ’24 wistfully recalled the early days of the pandemic, when most people believed that COVID -19 was going to be a short-lived episode, when students were preparing to be out of the classroom for 2-3 weeks tops. Head of School Kate Morin remarked on the indelible joy that this class exhibited, hard-fought joy, joy in the face of the most inhospitable circumstances. And Liesl Pike Moldow ’83 told the graduates: “You discovered an ironic truth, that there is both joy and suffering in our lives, because this beautiful world is a world of duality – a world of opposites,” and she reminded the graduates that, “to accept duality is to stop fighting life and start living it.” The school was honored to have Fr. Marcos Gonzalez with them for Graduation, the representative of the Most Reverend Archbishop of Los Angeles José H. Gomez, who ended the commencement exercises by blessing the entire class.

There are many, many more pictures and videos that will be coming to Mayfield families soon, but this is a small sampling of shots of a weekend where blessings were too many to count. “Congratulations Class of 2021! We are so proud of each and every one of you.”