GILL — With a gleeful toss of 190 mortarboards, the Class of 2025 said goodbye to Northfield Mount Hermon School on Sunday, with a cheering crowd that included alumni who still think of the school as “home.”

Mariah Draper Calagione and Sam Calagione III first met at NMH while on dining hall duty, in the late 1980s. She graduated from NMH in 1989 and he did not. After college, they married and founded the Dogfish Head brewery in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, growing the business from two dozen employees to 2,000.

Today, the couple is co-chairing a $275 million fund-raiser for NMH and served as keynote speakers for Sunday’s graduation. Their two children respectively graduated from NMH in 2018 and 2020.

Like her father Thomas Draper, NMH Class of 1960, Draper Calagione has served many years on the school’s board of trustees.

“I loved meeting kids from across the country and around the world,” she said. “The NMH that my dad went to in the 1950s changed his life and my experiences [at NMH] changed mine.

“We hope each of you will be engaged and active community members,” she continued. “Northfield Mount Hermon doesn’t let you sit on the sidelines. Our world needs you to be active and engaged. We have enough people sitting on the sidelines — chiming in from the sidelines — unwilling to put themselves or their values on the line.”

Sam Calagione said he wanted to be a fiction writer when he first came to the school as a student. But his connections to the school have gone on for 40 years.

“I met the love of my life, and in the 2.75 years on campus, I learned what kind of adult I wanted to become,” Calagione said.

Quoting a Ralph Waldo Emerson passage, Calagione learned from his NMH days, he said, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” He added that the differences of NMH students, past and present, “have made a better world.”

“It’s when we’re in community that we are learning from each other,” he added. “The best of this school is now coursing through you. But your best work has only just begun.”

Sunday’s graduation marked the school’s 142nd commencement, according to Head of School Brian Hargrove. This year’s NMH graduates came from 25 countries and from 24 U.S. states.

“There is no greater gift that parents or guardians can offer us than you,” Hargrove told the students. “And we offer you a gift that can never be taken away: an education.”

Class orator Sacharis “Shai” Lipton-Ferguson remembered puzzling over the lyrics to the school song “Jerusalem,” by the poet William Blake: “I will not cease from mental fight. … Till we have built Jerusalem in every green and pleasant land.”

“For Blake, Jerusalem represents something flawless and idyllic,” said Lipton-Ferguson. “But how were we supposed to develop a Jerusalem in Gill? How does this place we know to be incredibly imperfect become Jerusalem?”

While no place will ever be perfect, he said, each moment remembered and shared with others “doesn’t make this Jerusalem but makes us who we are,” he said.

“Jerusalem is how we help each other, Jerusalem is how we love each other,” Lipton-Ferguson said. “Let’s build new Jerusalems in each place we go and in each person we meet.”

Graduates from Franklin and Hampshire counties

Magdalene Provencal of Colrain; Grace Bird, Liam Shea, Madigan Pillsbury, Quinn Bathory-Peeler and Rigel Velez of Gill; Amelia Keeler, Hailey Haughey, Miles Chattman and Nathaniel Johnston of Greenfield; Griffin Moore of Leyden; Ariana Peterson-Ismail, Isabelle Eaton-Neaubert, Sophie Balk and Sydney Rourke of Northfield; Ella Hayes and Lydia Foote of Shelburne Falls.

Local award recipients

Magdalene Provencal, Cum Laude honor society, The Piscuskas Day Student Prize; Grace Bird, The Jo Dorchester Award; Nathaniel Johnston, The Howard and Margaret Jones Farm Award; Ariana Peterson-Ismail, Cum Laude honor society; Isabelle Eaton-Neubert, The Appley Award, The Kinmay Tang Award, The NMH Dance Prize.