By DEB BENTLY
Staff Writer
“We are meant to fail, learn, and then succeed,” suggested Tatum Smith Vulcan, one of three class speakers at NRHEG’s graduation ceremony held Sunday, June 4.
The Class of 2023 included 68 graduates, 36 of whom had grade point averages (GPAs) above 3.0. Three valedictorians were honored: Anton Domeier, Bree Ihrke, and Eva Wayne, all three for having earned perfect 4.0 GPAs. Two salutatorians, Erin Jacobson and Sidney Schultz, were announced.
Four members of the class, Samuel Christensen, Kara Doyle, Calvin Haun, and Jed Pfundt, were recognized for having joined a branch of the military.
The school’s gymnasium was filled nearly to capacity with family members and well wishers for the hour-and-a-half ceremony presided over by resigning secondary principal David Bunn, who told students that, just as they were headed out into a whole new world, so is he. “We’re in the same boat,” he commented. “Our lives are changing.”
The high school band performed “Earthdance” as its traditional “last song together,” that is, the final time the graduating seniors would be part of the group. A stirring number by composer Michael Sweeney, it imitates the arrival, passage and serenity of a thunderstorm. Likewise, the choir’s “I Am a Small Part of the World,” led by school choir director Krista Reeder, shared a message of cooperation and collaboration.
Also among the three class members selected as speakers by their peers was Evan Beckmann. His speech recalled the spring of 2020, when members of the group were freshmen becoming gradually acclimated to being at the bottom of the “food chain.” He described memories of hearing about a far-away pandemic, of believing it would never travel to Minnesota all the way from China–and of how surprised everyone felt when it did and school ended up being closed down. He mentioned that many lifelong memories resulted when physical education instructor John Schultz assigned his students to get 30 minutes of outdoor activity each day; in response, Beckmann said that he and many friends would go on long, shared bike rides. “Those rides started with just going around town and then going home,” he said. “But then turned into riding to Hollandale, Geneva, Clarks Grove, Hope and New Richland.
“Some of my favorite memories were made on those bikes: Those rides lasted until the end of the [school] year and into the summer.”
Class speaker Ethan Thompson spoke of the uncertainties presented as this school year ends and everyone’s future lives begin. Plans, he warned, have a way of changing or even being abandoned altogether. “If you keep doing what you believe in and you truly feel like you are making a difference,” he encouraged, “that is what matters.”
Early in the ceremony, superintendent Michael Meihak told the students it was time to admit their parents and grandparents have been right all along: Time DOES fly.
When Tatum Smith Vulcan took the stage a bit later, she inadvertently followed his instructions. “All of that time, and it only felt like one minute. I blinked and it was over. I never fully believed that my school years would go by this fast, until this moment speaking to all of you as we prepare to cross this stage.
“We take time for granted, and if there’s one thing I want you to get out of this, it’s that time is a thief, and we spend too much of it wishing it away.”