“We did it,” Helen Damon told her classmates during commencement. “Let me be the first to congratulate you for this accomplishment.”

The afternoon marked the school’s 40th annual commencement and its first as a community college.

During the hour-and-a-half ceremony, college officials praised the Class of 2004 for its hard work and determination. The keynote speaker, Marguerite Stapleton, vice president of mission effectiveness for the Sisters of Charity Health System, urged the new graduates to find their passion and make it their mission.

“Risk more than others think is safe,” she said. “Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.”

Several hundred people attended the ceremony, filling the school’s Kirk Hall Gymnasium and part of a nearby auditorium, where the ceremony was broadcast via closed-circuit TV. With 342 people, the Class of 2004 was the largest in the school’s 40-year history.

Richard Bastow, head of the architectural and civil engineering technology department, has been there for the last 36 of them.

“You’d think it’s old hat,” said Bastow, who was honored for his years of service. “But each one’s exciting. Each one’s different.”

Many of the new graduates had a different reaction to commencement.

“It’s about time!” said Rachael Begin, a 22-year-old architecture student from Jay who spent the past three years going to school, working and taking care of her teenage sister

Named Central Maine Community College’s Student of the Year, she credited the college’s close-knit community and strong support system for her success.

“I’m going to be afraid to go to a big school after this,” said Begin, who plans to take a year off before pursing a four-year degree in North Carolina.

Others figured they’d probably been going to school long enough.

“It’s a relief!” said 19-year-old Adam Mills as his parents and grandparents chuckled.

After 15 years of school – two in the community college’s computer science program and 13 in high school and elementary school – the Lewiston man wasn’t sure he wanted to return to class. So what’s next?

“Look for a job,” he said.

For others, their time at the community college wasn’t about getting a higher degree or landing a better job. It was all about knowledge.

Martha Sirois, a 60-year-old retired elementary school teacher from Greene, earned a culinary arts certificate Friday after two years of study. Surrounded by her three children, her husband and a friend, she smiled as she remembered all the hard work it took to master a new skill.

“I feel proud,” she said. “I feel like, Yoo-hoo!'”

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