"To be or not" was the theme on Saturday afternoon, May 30 when Bob Foster spoke to the graduating class of the Deck House School in Edgecomb. About 100 students and family gathered for the ceremony on the school's 180-acre property overlooking the Sheepscot River.

Foster urged the students to keep getting up after life's knock downs. 

"Getting there on time is half of the battle," he said. "And getting back up after you've been knocked down is pretty much the other half."

The Deck House School is a college preparatory school for boys grades 9-12. Some recent graduates have gone on to such colleges as the University of Maine and Middlebury.

The school was founded in the late 1970s by Edward T. "Ned" Hall, the former headmaster of the prestigious Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts.

"I always believed that boys who were expelled from our schools for minor social infractions deserved a second chance and that's why I started Deck House," said the headmaster.

Since Hall’s death, the school is now run as a nonprofit organization by a board of directors with Dr. Melinda Browne as head of school.