monmouth – Sunny skies greeted the graduating class on Monmouth Academy Sunday as the school prepared to graduate the 62 students making up the class of 2006.
Students, dressed in their maroon and white gowns, greeted family and friends outside the school posing for pictures with their classmates.
Senior class co-president Emily Masi captured the joy over good weather for a change in her greeting to the assembled crowd when she joked that “dad wants me to cut this short so he can go fishing.”
The class of 2006 gathered onstage in the Stuart Foster Gymnasium for commencement exercise.
The ceremony went into full swing as The Monmouth Academy Concert Band performed “The Pachelbel Cannon” and fourth honor part Crystal Cobb took the stage.
Cobb, drawing on her adoption as a child for the inspiration of her speech, tackled diversity and the sense of community that she found at Monmouth. “None of us are the same,” Cobb said, “that is why I have never felt left out.”
“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than being able to decide” said third honor part Laura Manduca, who discussed the decisions she made throughout her time at Monmouth, the teams she joined and the activities she participated in, and how they affected the person she became.
Salutatorian Kurtis McCannell dealt with his own case of the “graduation blues” during his address. “I’ve always been afraid of change,” he admitted, drawing a few laughs. But “whether I like it or not, I am graduating today.”
It was clear that Valedictorian Scott Ogden had heard enough in recent months of having to face “the real world” that is so often brought to the attention of graduates. Having been faced with the pressures of high school academics, sports and community involvement, Ogden asks, “are they implying that I have never been in the real world’?” The question, he says, is “have I really been much of anywhere else?”
The transition to the real world, Ogden predicts “will not be as rough as some predicted.”
To the upbeat, yet touching, sounds of Rusted Root’s “Send Me On My Way,” the graduates received their diplomas with a slideshow of baby pictures flashing, eliciting parental pride from the crowd and mock chagrin from the graduates.
School Board Chairman Davis Walker, Superintendent Stephen Cottrell and Principal Michael R. Burnham presented diplomas.
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