A BVU Commencement Visit 56 Years in the Making
1965 graduate, Cornelius Pigott, returns to campus from California to watch his daughter Kindra Franzen graduate. Pigott received an unexpected special recognition of his own during the Commencement ceremony.
Shortly after the 2021 Buena Vista University graduates received their diplomas on May 8, President Brian Lenzmeier turned his attention to a special alum who sat among the throngs of families and well wishers at J. Leslie Rollins Stadium on campus. Lenzmeier led a chorus in applause, honoring a 1965 BVU graduate who returned to campus to watch his daughter complete the ceremonial walk for her diploma.
Kindra (Pigott) Franzen had just received her bachelor’s degree in human services. As she studied her diploma, BVU’s President recognized her father.
“If you’ll allow me, we have one last graduate to recognize a little late: Cornelius Pigott, Class of 1965, joins us today from California, where he has worked in financial advising for decades... Cornelius was not able to make the trip back to Storm Lake to his Spring Commencement after graduating in December some 56 years ago,” Lenzmeier said. “We are so excited to finally welcome him back to campus to celebrate not only his daughter’s graduation, but his as well.”
“That was really wonderful,” Cornelius Pigott said from his seat. “Thank you so much.”
Cornelius Philip Pigott IV, the man called “Corky” during his days at Storm Lake St. Mary’s High School and then at BVU in the 1960s, graduated at the conclusion of the first semester in December 1965. He then packed his belongings and headed to California, in search of a career.
“It took me thirty to forty-five days to find a job in California,” he remembers. “I was an English major and I went to work for Pacific Life, a life insurance company and financial investment advisory firm that was looking for someone to edit and modify the language used to highlight their policies distributed to clients. I did that for two years and then began to rise through the ranks.”
Ultimately, Pigott entered sales and investments and worked to build Pigott Financial Corporation in Clovis, Calif.
“I had worked during my summers in Storm Lake at Kingan and Company (known later as Hy-Grade Food Products Corporation), the meat processing plant,” he says. “I also worked for Swanson’s Grocery Store.”
Hard work in establishing a business and a family kept Pigott on the West Coast, save for a trip back home to Storm Lake every so often. Those visits, however, never coincided with a Commencement ceremony at BVU. That is, until this month when his daughter, Kindra (Pigott) Franzen, chose to travel to campus for her Commencement.
“When I found out about the graduation at BVU, I talked to my advisor, because I wanted to be able to walk for my diploma and share in the celebration, the culmination of a lot of work,” says Franzen, who found the convenience of BVU online instruction and the seamless BVU transfer process to her liking. “I also wanted to do it so that my dad could watch me pick up my diploma at the place where he earned his diploma 56 years earlier.”
The occasion grew once Lenzmeier learned of Pigott’s presence at a Commencement ceremony he missed nearly six decades ago.
“It was our pleasure to recognize Cornelius, who had come so far, in distance and in decades, for this celebration,” Lenzmeier says.
For those fortunate enough to meet Cornelius Pigott, they interacted with a BVU Beaver who not only knew the story of the Victory Arch, but could speak about it first-hand. He was there in September 1956 when it burned to the ground.
“I remember standing on campus, joining some of my classmates at St. Mary’s in coming here when we heard Old Main was burning,” he says. “We couldn’t believe the size, the intensity of those flames.”
On this special weekend in 2021, it was his daughter, who made that traditional procession through the structure whose limestone and granite were salvaged from the inferno, the disaster from which BVU and its surrounding community of friends and alumni emerged, ever stronger.
“It is wonderful being on campus, seeing Siebens Forum, how incredible it is, and learning about some of the history my father experienced,” says Kindra, who is now pursuing a BVU master’s degree in organizational communications.
“I’m the fourth in my family to graduate from BVU and there are more on the way,” she notes.
“It has always been a wonderful place,” says Cornelius, one of thousands of BVU alumni who faithfully support the University through financial gifts every year. “I’m forever grateful for what I learned in Storm Lake; at St. Mary’s, through work at Kingan’s and Swanson’s, and in everything the people at BVU helped me to accomplish. It’s a terrific school.”