The Class of 2009 ceremoniously bears the distinction of being the 100th graduating class of Falls High School.
It is also, after many years, the first FHS class to make its traditional “Pomp and Circumstance” entrance on a Sunday, rather than a Thursday.
And the class was bold enough to choose as its colors purple and silver; and as its class song “Good Riddance,” said student speaker Anna Remus to a packed FHS gymnasium Sunday.
“But are we going to keep being different?” she asked her 89 classmates. “It’s time to do something great, ...” she declared. “This desire to be unique is something that can take us great places.”
Remus was the last of four FHS graduating seniors to speak after a choral ensemble sang the “Star Spangled Banner;” Superintendent Don Langan delivered a welcome; and an original song “I’ll Always Hate Goodbyes,” was sung by graduates Shelby Thorstad and Liz Schultz.
Remus quoted several sages of the past, explaining that “sayings shape us,” but adding that we don’t “truly appreciate those words until we’ve gone our separate ways.”
She urged her fellow classmates to heed TV anchorman and author Tom Brokaw’s idiom and use their “diploma as a ticket to change the world.”
And she closed quoting the familiar words of beloved American poet Robert Frost, which are emblazoned across the FHS cafeteria wall:
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.”
Classmate Kasshia Mostad delivered the dictum "Desiderata" (Latin for "desired things") made popular during the 1960s but first copyrighted in 1927 by Max Ehrmann. The prose encapsulates the wisdoms for attaining happiness.
It begins: “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence...” It ends: “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
Alex Ringhofer reminded her classmates that “no one has traveled our journey.”
She reminisced through the years of kindergarten, from “making friends in a heartbeat,” to learning to write kercif, to the sixth grade class trip, and to entering junior and senior high school.
“The beautiful part is that we can proudly say we made it together,” Ringhofer said. “After today, dreams continue but we stop traveling together. ...As we move on, some are ready to go, some don’t want it to end.
“... What we will remember is not where a journey ended, but where it began.”
Student speaker Sara Lindberg reminded the Class of 2009 that it’s “crucial to remember who we are and where we came from ....”
After the presentation of honor students, school board members Michelle Hebner, Roger Jerome, Willi Kostiuk, Mark Lassila and Stuart Nordquist made the presentation of diplomas.
FHS principal Tim Everson, with a brief explanation of the unique waterfall design on the FHS graduation ring, asked students to switch their rings so the water flows outward.
With the announcement of the Class of 2009, caps were customarily tossed into the air and the music of Green Day’s “Good Riddance” filled the air: “It's something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right. I hope you had the time of your life.”
Graduates later posed for photographs, embraced by friends and family as their new journeys begin.
