The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 21

The Boston Globe City Region B5 MONDAY, JUNE 9, 2003 'T, jw- Cambridge College's 1,700 'older' graduates v.l 1 1 i 1 IT if IKIMI III I II till I HH I Hill II III Ml I IIHIMIMII I Commencements YESTERDAY Cambridge College, Cambridge Graduates: 1,622 Degrees: bachelor's, master's Speaker Jarrett Barrios, Massachusetts state senator Honorary degrees: Barrios; Norma W. Fink, management consultant; Ronald A. Homer, Cambridge College life trustee Dartmouth College, Hanover, NJL Graduates: 1,600 Degrees: bachelor's, master's, doctorates Speaker David McCullough, author and historian Honorary degrees: McCullough; Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation; Marilyn Hughes Gaston, former assistant surgeon general; Robert Henderson, former Dartmouth trustee; Billie Jean King, women's tennis great; W. S. Merwin, poet; Frederick Whittemore, advisory director of Morgan Stanley Williams College, Williamstown Graduates: 544 Degrees: bachelor's, master's Speaker: Dr.

Eric Lander, founder and director of the Whitehead Center for Genome Research Honorary degrees: Michael R. Beschloss, political historian; James MacGregor Bums, presidential biographer; Gwen Kill, moderator of Washington Week; Lander; Monica Lozano, publisher Thaddeus Lott, educator; Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve chairman i Bishes focus on guarding others Foundation backs efforts to locate missing children By Douglas Belkin GLOBE STAFF FRAM INGHAM Even as scientists test newly found bones for traces of their daughter's DNA, Molly Bish's parents yesterday helped photograph and fingerprint hundreds of squirming, smiling, laughing children to protect them from the nightmare their family is enduring. "This gives a focus, a place to put our energy," John Bish said yesterday under a tent at a fair at the State Police barracks here. "It's something we can do that's positive, and that, frankly, can keep us sane." In the nearly three years since their 16-year-old daughter disappeared from her lifeguard stand at Comins Pond in Warren, John and Magdalen Bish have become activists for abducted children. In that time, they have helped create identification cards for 46,000 children through the Molly Bish Foundation.

The goal of the foundation is to establish and provide safety awareness programs, create the Magdalen Bish (center) spoke to Meghan Macomber, 4, of Hopedale yesterday in Framingham where she was fingerprinted under a program promoted by the Molly Bish Foundation. IDs, and, in case a child is abducted, assist investigators by providing posters, fliers, and buttons. But yesterday, John Bish admitted, the poignancy of the effort was particularly strong. Last month, a bathing suit that may have belonged to Molly was found 5 miles from the pond where she was last seen. In the ensuing weeks, authorities have uncovered nearly two dozen bones scattered in nearby woods, and scientists have determined they belonged to a teen by Catherine Dunn GLOBE CORRESPONDENT She left the Dominican Republic first; her husband followed.

He decided to get his master of education degree; his wife joined him in the program a few months later. Finally, Ivelisse Cornielle, 45, and Gustavo Paulino, 51, did something at the same time: They graduated yesterday from Cambridge College. The couple lined up with about 1,700 fellow graduates at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Roxbury. For Cornielle and Paulino, both teachers at Lawrence High School, attending a college that caters to a student body with an average age of 39 eased the burdens of balancing class, work, and family. Now they not only have advanced degrees, they have improved their English and set an example for their three children, Cornielle said.

Student speaker Li Miao asked the graduates, "Have you ever thought it was too late and too hard to do something you always wanted to do?" Miao said she wasnt sure if she would be able to pursue a degree in English, her second language; yesterday she celebrated the completion of a master's degree in management. Joseph M. Smith, another student speaker, prompted cheers when he said he was graduating from college for the first time. The 52-year-old joked that if he had taken any longer to finish, he'd be receiving his Medicare card. The school also awarded honorary degrees to the keynote speaker, state Senator Jarrett Barrios, Democrat from Cambridge; Norma W.

Fink, a management consultant and member of the Cambridge College Board of Trustees; and Ronald A. Homer, a Cambridge College life trustee and chief executive officer of Access Capital Strategies, an investment advisory firm in Cambridge. Melanie Figueroa, 14, and her brother Jonathan, 9, of Haverhill, were on hand to watch their mother receive a certificate of advanced graduate studies. They had been here before, Jonathan pointed out as he clutched a bouquet of red roses. This was their mother's second diploma from Cambridge College.

Julie Hall of Falmouth, leaned on a railing as she waited to watch her daughter, Stephanie Ferris, walk across the stage. Hall, a first-grade teacher who has a master of education degree from Cambridge College, said it was strange to see her daughter pick up the same degree from the same college nine years later. Hall recalled how Ferris used to say she would never become a teacher like her mother. "It's funny how sometimes things turn around and you end up doing what your parents do." While the graduation evoked a sense of deja vu for Hall, it served as a premonition for Edward Initial search was even more O'Neal. O'Neal, 46, has a year left in his pursuit of a master of education and integrated studies degree.

With three more classes to go, he also has two jobs as a mental health worker one at McLean Hospital, the other at Bourn ewood Hospital. As O'Neal waited for the ceremonies to begin, his professors gave him a thumbs up. "That means IU be here next year," he said. PLEXIGLAS and other plastics J. FREEMAN, INC.

617-282-1150 or 1-800-841-9442 www.Jfreeman.com GLOBE STAFF PHOTO JOHN BOHN His daughter is concentrating her energy on raising her own child. Bish said his own response has been to focus on his family and search for a sense of comfort. He has also begun speaking of his daughter in the past tense. There is an element of peace to this," he said. "At least we know she wasnt tied up somewhere by some awful person who was beating her and starving her Now I know where she is.

I'd give my life to have her back, but at least now I dont have to worry." intense ductor or clues as to how she disappeared, Comins Pond and its woody environs, which span miles southward all the way to the Massachusetts Turnpike, became the natural focal point of the search. "You almost always start a search at the place last seen, which was the pond," said Lieutenant Thomas Curran, leader of the State Police's elite search and rescue unit that has led searches for Bish. "That was our one clue: the place last seen." Michael Foster, leader of the Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue Team, a civilian volunteer search group, said he remembers trudging through swamps at 3 a.m. the day after Bish disappeared. Months later, his team was called back to search various areas in the region where investigators were pursuing leads.

None panned out. John Bish, Molly's father, who described the search back then as "exhaustive," said police dogs tracked what they believed to be his daughter's scent both east and west of the pond to Reed Street and Bemis Road. But in both cases, the trail dried up. 2000 abduction sparked massive ground, air hunt By Peter DeMarco GLOBE CORRESPONDENT The renewed search for missing West Warren lifeguard Molly Bish enters its fifth week today. But as intense as the effort has been, it does not compare to the massive search that was launched the morning of June 27, 2000, after she vanished.

In the weeks that followed, more than 200 police officers, cadets, and trained civilian searchers covered about 7 square miles of forest, fields, swamps, and small mountains, most of them in the vicinity of Comins Pond in Warren. Dogs, helicopters, sonar equipment, horses, even turkey vultures were used to no avail in an effort to find the girl. "It was about a month of nonstop, 24-hours searching," said Warren Fire Chief James Dolan, whose department aided in the MX ager. They are currently being analyzed for DNA. If they belong to Molly Bish, her family will probably know soon.

"Every time the phone rings we jump," John Bish said yesterday. The evidence has forced the Bishes to try to come to grips with Molly's likely fate. "Within three hours of her abduction, she was in deep trouble," Bish said yesterday. The family members are each coping in their own way, the father said. His wife cries every day.

His son speaks little about his sister. AP PHOTO and Palmer. Portions of Whiskey Hill were searched, though not the areas where a bathing suit and human bones have recently been recovered. Bish vanished literally without a trace: her sandals, a police radio, and an opened first-aid kit were all that remained at her lifeguard station. With no evidence of an ab June 27, 2000, was spotted last November by a bow hunter while he was scouting for deer on Whiskey Hill.

But he did not report the discovery until last month, when the garment was recovered by State Police, re-igniting the investigation. Ben Ermini, director of the Missing Children's Division for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said chance discoveries, unfortunately, often provide better clues than exhaustive searches by authorities. Congressional intern Chandra Levy's bones were recovered more than a year after her April 2001 disappearance by a private citizen walking through a park in Washington. In 1997, a passerby walking in Wayland noticed a small piece of bone on the ground. It turned out to be a skull fragment belonging to Sarah Pryor, a local 9-year-old girl who had vanished without a trace 12 years earlier.

"Very often we find remains in this manner," said Ermini. Since last Tuesday, 22 bones belonging to an unidentified teenager have been found on Whiskey Hill by State and Environmental police searchers. Authorities should learn today whether the first bone found, of an upper arm, can provide a nuclear DNA sample that can be matched to the genes of both of Bish's parents for a positive identification. Staff reporter Michael Rosenwald contributed to report. I Police walked slowly in close formation Thursday in Palmer, looking for any clues in the disappearance of Molly Bish.

Forests frustrated Bish search "0" 1X3 LI DD FITNESS EQUIPMENT FLOOR MODEL toP)Wofi. search. "We went from South-bridge Road to South Street. We did pastures, forests. We went on old cart roads, ATV trails.

Everything." Search teams eventually combed other sections of Warren, including Coy Hill, a popular hangout for teenagers, as well as areas in neighboring Brimfield takes us." What authorities did have after Bish disappeared were tips from the public several thousand of them. But again, it appears that none gave credible reasons as for why Whiskey Hill would be the probable location of a body. The predominant theory at the time was that a man seen driving a white car in a cemetery abutting Comins Pond somehow lured Bish from her lifeguard station, kidnapped her, and escaped via the nearest road, Route 19, which runs southward to the Massachusetts Turnpike the opposite direction of Whiskey Hill. Other tips led investigators to neighboring Brimfield or Ware, or Belchertown. Three weeks before the bathing suit was recovered, State Police were following a tip that Bish had been seen alive in Florida, Conte said.

"A lot of those leads took police far away from where they should have been going. There was probably too much information not directly related to Molly's disappearance," John Bish, Molly's father, said during an interview last week. "They should have no regrets for what they could or couldnt do, given what they had, which was nothing," he said. "I feel badly about them not searching where the bathing suit was found. But it would have been a shot in the dark." The blue and white Nike swim-suit, identical to the one Bish was wearing when she disappeared 0 HUGE ASSORTMENT OF TOP BRANDS INCLUDING: TRUE, SCHWINN, HOIST, CYBEX, NAUTILUS, STAIRMASTER, TUFF STUFF MORE DAD NEVER LOOKED SO COODI BISH Continuedfrom Page Bl But geography is not the only reason why it has taken investigators so long to find what appears to be the first real clues as to what may have happened to Bish.

Because the 16-year-old lifeguard was assumed, at first, to have drowned in the pond, authorities and volunteers rushed onto the beach to reach the water, thus wiping out any clues her abductor may have left in the area. The bathing suit, recovered just last month, is the first tangible piece of evidence in the case. Some local residents, frustrated by the lack of an arrest, have been critical of the investigation. They point out that densely wooded Whiskey Hill, with its secluded old logging trails, caves, and rugged terrain, is an ideal place to dispose of a body. Indeed, just three months before Bish disappeared, the bodies of a man and a woman were found jn a pickup truck on one of the hill's dirt roads, the apparent victims of a murder-suicide, But Worcester District Attorney John Conte, whose office is leading the investigation, said detectives simply had no evidence at the time that would have pointed 'them in that direction.

J' "We looked at so many areas in the original search," he said, adding that a section of Whiskey Hill which lies in the towns of Warren, Palmer, and Ware, was looked at three years ago. "AsIVe said many times, we go to where the evidence i I I TREADMILLS, ELLIPTICALS, HOME GYMS, FREE-WEIGHTS, BIKES ACCESSORIES VISIT OUR STORE LOCATIONS INt Cambridge: 617-576-6300 Newton: 617-332-1967 Peabody: 978-538-5200 Off original mfr. 8ugtMl retail vrio. Not to fa combined with any other tfr. SERIOUS FITNESS.

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