Graduate James Erfe poses for a photo for friends Marissa Caraballo, left, and Wendyanne Caraballo Friday before the Stonington High School drive-in style graduation ceremony at Olde Mistick Village in Mystic.
Ceremony started just after sunset
Stonington — In the days leading up to Friday night’s Stonington High School drive-in commencement in the parking lot of Olde Mistick Village, salutatorian Kaira Wiltshire said some of her classmates had complained about the COVID-19 pandemic regulations that forced the ceremony to move from its traditional location on the high school football field.
“But I told them the administration did the best they could and to look at it that way,” she said. “It’s time to move on from the football field. This will be the ceremony that will always be remembered.”
Friday night’s ceremony began at 8:45 p.m., just after the sun had set, so the 157 graduates and their families could see the large video screen while listening to the audio from their car radios. Speakers such as Wiltshire, valedictorian Hanna Hong, class President Cole Wilbur and the commencement speaker, Sandra LaCombe, an English teacher at the school, spoke live at a podium and their remarks were broadcast into the cars. A video of each graduate receiving their diploma holder over the past week was shown on the screen.
Wiltshire, who is off to Boston College to study economics and philosophy, said while the second half of her senior year was disappointing she “just dealt with it.”
“It was definitely disappointing at first as we watched senior events slipped by like the prom and banquets which were canceled. You wait to be a second semester senior for a long time and then it doesn’t happen. It definitely doesn’t feel like the end because we never had a final day of school,” she said, adding she overcame the disappointment by making to-do lists and talking to her friends.
Hong, who will study at Dartmouth College this fall, agreed there were disappointments. “But it wasn’t devastating. We got through it and found ways to communicate and show support for each other,” she said. “And the school’s done a great job in giving us closure and some memorable experiences,” such as placing graduation signs on their lawn and homeroom teachers bringing them gifts.
LaCombe told the graduates,
“The coronavirus pandemic has magnified the reality that there is much about life that is out of our control. As we watch illness wreak havoc in our community and normalcy crumble all around us, it is easy to feel helpless and victim to the whims of fate; however, in these most trying of times lies Tolkien’s timeless lesson: ‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’ All we can do is embrace those elements within our control and use our power to shape the trajectory of our path. To bend the arc of fate toward victory. The only thing we can do, is simply do our best.”
LaCombe told the crowd in the cars that at the beginning of every school year, she asks her students to strive to make every space they enter better for having been there.
“I am now posing this request to each of you. Wherever your life takes you from this moment, make every space you enter better for you having been there,” she said.
She also urged the students that as they navigate the moments of their lives, that they remember the lessons taught to them by the heroes of the pandemic: “the generous volunteers delivering groceries to those in need, the courageous essential workers and first responders supporting their communities, the heroic health care workers and caregivers risking their own lives to heal the sick. You have been taught by the greatest teachers of all time.”
Hong told her classmates that she has always thought that one of the unique features of this year’s senior class was its ability to make the best of a bad situation. “We all have faced disappointments in canceled sports seasons, unworn prom dresses, or simply in being forced to spend all our days with the same people, without leaving the house. Social-distance-learning wasn’t ideal for what should have been the satisfying conclusion to four years spent together. Despite the end of our high school experience seeming bleaker than any of us had imagined, we still rallied as a class for numerous accomplishments...”
Later, she added, “Our resiliency will serve to ensure that even when we feel as though every possible catastrophe in existence is aimed at us, we still strive to better ourselves and better the lives of those we care about.”