FRYEBURG – “Welcome to independence” was the message Fryeburg Academy graduate Ian Mitchell Ferguson gave his fellow classmates at commencement exercises where about 150 senior class members received their diplomas Sunday afternoon.

Hundreds of family and friends crowded into the new field house as the graduates, wearing the school’s blue and white colors, marched into the room to the tradition sounds of “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Much to the chagrin of many of the graduates who had to suffer in a hot upstairs hallway waiting to march into the air conditioned field gym, the ceremony was held in the new field house because of uncertainty in the weather.

“Good thing we’re inside because the weather outside is awful,” joked Ferguson.

As is tradition at the academy, he, Rebecca Anna Even and Aaron Paul Kasparov were selected by the class as commencement speakers in lieu of the traditional valedictorian and salutatorian.

“When the time comes it will be us who initiates change,” Even, who served as class president, told her classmates, faculty, families and friends.

Even said she recently opened a letter she had written to herself four years ago and found the writer to be someone who seemed shallow and pathetic. “She is a girl with which I can find nothing admirable,” said Even of herself. “Four years is all I needed to be shocked by who I was .”

“I hope every person can say they are a better person than they were four years ago,” she said.

Kasprak said this graduating class was the “greatest class of all time.” Kasprak named off individual students and teachers and their individual talents. “This will be the end of the beginning of our lives,” he said of graduation.

In his speech Ferguson said he and his fellow students were about to “step off into the precipice and into the unknown.”

“Each of the class of 2007 has incredible gifts and talents to offer the world,” said Ferguson, who ended his speech with a guitar solo and song about leaving Fryeburg Academy. “Goodbye to FA. We’re on our way,” he sang as the audience and his classmates gave him a standing ovation.

Headmaster Daniel G. Lee, Jr. presented awards to the seniors including the new Barbara Douglas Intercultural Ambassadors award, which is named after a retiring language teacher.

Lee said the reason so many academy students come from near and far is because of its first-rate teachers and the “extraordinary job” language teachers, like Douglas, do in teaching English as a second language.

Lee also likened the music of Ferguson to his artistic hero, Bob Dylan, saying it was “a wonderful song with a wonderful message.”

Asa O. Pike IV, president of the Board of Trustees, presented diplomas to graduates.