Humanity resonates at WHS graduation rite

WASILLA — To a packed house entering from a parking lot too small to handle the incoming crowd, more than 250 graduating seniors waved goodbye to Wasilla High School and made their first tentative steps into adulthood.

But before they left Thursday night, the seniors — 262 in all, according to the ceremony’s written program — heard from adults who had been there before and from their peers embarking on journeys of their own.

The class produced not one valedictorian but seven — Benjamin Fife, Robyn Hall, Rachel Kennedy, Maddie Merriam, Emily Ripley, Valerie Schleich and Dylan Spargo. And all seven, plus the school’s student body president, Drew Ford, took turns on the stage of the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, each contributing their own small speech to create one conglomerated address.

The theme was the idea that students would be heading in myriad directions and would no longer have their common status as high school students to unite them, only their common humanity.

“I want to be a heroic human,” was one of many repetitions of that phrase, with each speaker inserting his or her own adjective.

Taken as a whole, it could be said that the graduating class hopes to be, among other things, living, contributing, aware, just, compassionate, committed, heroic, serving, motivated humans.

The speakers and, likely, their peers, also took inspiration from a variety of sources, including Henry David Thoreau, Nicholas Sparks, Anne Frank, Mark Twain, Henry Ford and even Harry Potter’s wizarding mentor Albus Dumbledore, all of whom Ford and the valedictorians quoted in their speeches.

Before the ceremony began, senior Avianna Conn sat on a bench talking with a couple of friends, wearing a customized red mortarboard with black-and-white zebra stripes covering its top surface.

Asked how she felt on graduation day she answered, “accomplished.” Conn said she intends to enroll at Mat-Su College and learn to be a veterinary technician.

She said she enjoyed her time at WHS.

“I consider our teachers our friends,” she said, adding that she still respects them as adults and instructors.

A few steps away, Isaiah Edwards, also in red graduation regalia, stood in a circle talking with a handful of other grads and well-wishers.

“This is my second time graduating,” he said.

His first was in Germany, where his military family was based before moving to Alaska. German children graduate in the ninth grade, he said. So he started over in Wasilla as a sophomore.

He said he plans to attend the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he will join the ROTC and learn Japanese. He thinks Japanese will pair well with his German fluency in his eventual career as a military translator or teacher.

Before students could walk across the stage there was one last speaker to go — Channel 2 News anchor Maria Downey.

Downey said the accomplishments of the WHS class of 2010 affirmed her belief that, “There is so much more good in the world than bad.”

The theme of her address, she said, was stewardship — giving to others of your “time, talent and treasure.”

“Try not to get the usual tunnel vision that we all get at that stage in our lives,” she told the graduates. “During college or whatever your next step is, think about how you can set aside time weekly to work for another cause.”

And, she urged the graduates, don’t fall prey to cynicism. “Think positive. Don’t allow yourself to be drawn into what appears to be a growing trend of being not only negative, but loud, rude and aggressively negative.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.