Wind and wisdom: Class speakers share messages of growth during outdoor graduation ceremony at Palmer High

The community of Palmer is known for a couple of things. At or near the top of the list are the Palmer Moose and the Palmer winds.

Both were at center stage as Palmer High School celebrated its class of 2026 on a more than breezy evening May 19 at Palmer High’s Machetanz Field during the Mat-Su Borough School District’s lone outdoor graduation ceremony of commencement season, which has become a proud somewhat recent tradition for the Valley school.

About 120 graduates held a tight grip on their caps during the procession and about 90 minutes later flipped them into the sky overlooking a field with Matanuska Peak and Pioneer Peak in the backdrop.

In between, senior class president Katherine Bruce, and class speakers Alexandria Starke and Marcellina Fagaltinmad reflected on their trials and triumphs as students at PHS. Keynote speaker Joseph Bentel, a teacher and coach at Palmer High, not only passed along his own words of wisdom. He also dug into the archives and shared the thoughts of a handful of members of the class of 2026 he had in class as freshmen.

“As a parent, and in this line of work, there's one thing I try to keep in mind. You can tell a child something, but you can't make them understand it. They do that part on their own,” Bentel said. “And more often than not, kids and people listen to someone that's closer to their age, a peer perhaps. With this in mind, let's take some advice from ninth graders.”

A question:

What should we do when life tests are moral and ethical integrity?

Reed Craner’s answer as a freshman:

“Never lie to yourself, no matter what.”

Next question:

“There are many times when you wonder, who am I?”

Oscar Duncan’s answer as a ninth grader:

“ I want you to think about how vast and limited our universe can be. We are in a galaxy we cannot fully see out of two trillion different galaxies. We are 93 million miles away from a burning ball of gas that we see every day. And everything we see in our life is made up of tiny atoms we can never see.”

Another question:

“How might you deal with the process of aging? Growing old, becoming not cool anymore.”

Wyatt Jacobs had an answer.

“I can look back and see that I am smarter than I was the year before, so... So I'm growing and learning, and I embrace that. And I think that other people should, too. Because you can see life and embrace aging in a better way, and you can live to be happy about your aging and not be sad and gloomy that you're getting older and closer to death. And you can see it as a learning journey and be happy that you're gaining more knowledge.”

And growth is partly what each student speaker focused on.

Starke’s growth, she said, was the result of facing adversity, notably medical challenges.

“When I started high school, I thought that success would line up in a straight path. As a freshman, I thought if I just worked hard and stayed focused, everything would fall in place,” she said. “But somewhere along the way, my idea of success changed. During the past few years, I have been facing medical challenges that made the most normal of days feel uncertain. There were times when even just showing up to school in the morning felt like an accomplishment itself, and times where I had to slow down. It felt like everyone else was moving forward, and I was just stuck. There were moments where I questioned myself and my capabilities as a student, and as a friend. It's difficult to explain the feeling of wanting so badly to move forward with my classmates, but being stuck, because medically, your body just isn't playing fair. So as I mentioned before, success in high school didn't fall into a straight line for me.”

Regardless, Starke enjoyed success. She is one of Palmer High’s 11 International Baccalaureate candidates, a member of both National Honor Society and Japanese National Honor Society, and will attend UAF to study justice and psychology with the intent of a career as a prosecuting attorney.

“I have taken my experiences and let them teach me something that I wouldn't have learned otherwise. Progress doesn't have to look a certain way. It can be quiet, it can be slow, it can be choosing not to give up when things feel uncertain. It can be loud and proud, but it looks different to each one of us,” she said.

Fagaltinmad praised her mother, a first-generation immigrant from a country in the South Pacific.

“(She) instilled the importance of meaningful hard work in humility in me, never failing to remind me of the opportunity this country and the school have given me for a better life. Here at Palmer High, I've come to learn that success isn't just measured by spotlight and rank, but by the substance of your character and the moral impact that you make on the people around you,” she said.

And that’s a lesson learned through growth at Palmer High, she said.

“There were several times I beat myself up, convinced that being good was tied directly to my grades or the amount of work I could take on without burning out. I spent years caught in the cycle of seeking approval. Worrying about what others thought of every little thing I did, and who I was supposed to become instead of just being and doing,” she said.

A few words from Henry David Thoreau helped out.

“Be not simply good, be good for something.”

It’s a message passed along to her by the night’s keynote speaker, Joseph Bentel.

She’s an IB scholar, member of Educator’s Rising and the Japanese Honor Society. She also has her emergency trauma and wilderness certification, and will continue her study of emergency services at UAA with the goal of serving as a wildland firefighter and smoke jumper.

Contact Frontiersman managing editor Jeremiah Bartz at editor@frontiersman.com.