Novan class of 2017 has style and smiles
WOONSOCKET – As their classmates stepped into the future, the stars of Woonsocket High School’s Class of 2017 had some words of sage advice to their friends and fellow grads: Don’t forget where you came from.
“Our roots are important and Woonsocket is a root we all have in common,” Salutatorian Lucas Andres Rodriguez told his classmates from the dais at Barry Field Friday. “Our roots are important and Woonsocket is a root we all have in common.” Just like plants die without them,
“removing our roots causes us to lose the identity that we share from starting in Woonsocket. It has formed who were are today.”
Rodriguez and Valedictorian Christina Rose Lussier were among a string of students and dignitaries who took turns offering heartfelt farewells and pithy tidbits of guidance as Woonsocket High School discharged 259 graduates from the Class of 2017 into the uncertain and exciting world beyond high school. The sun returned to Barry Field just in time for the ceremony after a series of rainy squalls drenched the area – and a crowd of some 1,200 spectators – shortly before the affair.
But Principal Carnell Henderson said even Mother Nature is no match for the gritty, accomplished Class of 2017.
“The rain isn’t going to stop us,” he said. “No adversary stops us. The show goes on.”
Henderson, School Committee Vice President Donald Burke, Schools Supt. Patrick McGee and Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt were among those who shared the speaking platform, offering words of praise, encouragement and fond farewells to the graduates, clad in their signature caps and gowns – white for women, maroon for the men.
It was a group marked by excellence, as McGee described them. It includes 53 members of the Rhode Island and National honor societies; 13 graduates who have signed on for a hitch in various branches of the military; 82 who have been accepted to four-year colleges; 80 heading for twoyear colleges; 10 who will enroll in technical colleges; and 131 who are graduating from the Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center with trades skills.
Dr. Seuss may not have been on the mandatory reading list at high school, but McGee urged graduates to read “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” for some timeless messages about what it means to strike out on your own.
“Get on your way,” McGee enthused. “Go and find those great places.”
Baldelli-Hunt called the rite of passage “a joyous occasion where we are celebrating one of the most fantastic milestones in your young lives.” She said she meets with all kind of important people every day, but her encounters with children and young adults are some of the most uplifting because they offer “relief, a different perspective and hope.”
“This is not the end of your journey,” the mayor said, and she encouraged graduates to use the rest of it trying to help improve the lives of others. “We have a mission, a moral mandate to better others, while improving ourselves,” she said.
The weather wasn’t the only unscripted hiccup in the ceremony. As the event got started with the singing of the national anthem by Jouseph Santiago Torres, the vocalist stopped abruptly after he saw a male senior seated in the front row ahead of the dais collapse to the grass. A group of police officers and civilians came to the youth’s aid, and he seemed to recover, taking his seat as Santiago Torres resumed the anthem. But midway through the ceremony the ailing youth, alert but unable to stand on his own, was helped away from the field and left the area in a rescue squad.
The event continued without interruption, however, including remarks from Senior Class President Lalene Sirypannho.
Echoing the remarks of Salutatorian Rodriguez, she also advised her classmates, “Never forget where you came from and always remember where you’re going.”
Lussier, the valedictorian, recalled her experiences at WHS as a place where she and others grew from anxious freshman to confident seniors ribbing the newcomers about the alleged swimming pool in the top story of the Cass Avenue high school. Along way, she said, she and others took part in competitive sports, got driver’s licenses, took a lot of standardized tests and, finally, arrived where they are now, trying to figure out what to do next.
“High school is like a stepping stone,” she said. “We were all placed here for a reason, and now we are old enough, and wise enough to begin our great journey into the unknown. Whether it be college, the military or the workforce, all of us have a purpose. No dream is too big, for if you can dream it and believe it, you can achieve it.”
Above all, she said, high school wasn’t just about academics.
“It was here in high school where many of us grew up, and began taking on more responsibilities,” she said. “It was here that we all found our place in the world.”
The daughter of John and Donna Lussier, WHS’s topperforming student will be a freshman in the fall at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she intends to major in statistics and applied mathematics, with a minor in actuarial math. Salutatorian Rodriguez, the son of Elmer and Cheryl Rodriguez, will carry on at the University of Rhode Island, where he intends to embark on a course of studies in chemical engineering.
While the graduates remembered WHS as a formative place that shaped their identities, they also hailed the school’s atmosphere as a melting pot of cultural diversity – a feature of their educational experience they expect will leave them well-prepared for the real world.
“Our diversity sets us apart from the rest of Rhode Island and that is a superpower we have over many,” said Sirypannho. “Don’t be afraid of diversity, don’t be afraid to will your power into something great that can help in the world.”
Rodriguez said WHS wasn’t just school with a diverse student body – but a pull-yourself- up- by- thebootstraps kind of school. In the end, he predicted, he and his classmates will all be better off for it.
“In our community we haven’t been given everything and we have had to work for it,” he said. “As a result of this we have an advantage over others who come from more privileged communities because we have been taught a lesson of hard work and the goodness and satisfaction it can bring.”
As the road ahead opens up, whether it includes college or a career or a trade, “we must always remember to work hard and to have perseverance as times won’t always be easy,’ he said. “If we remember this after today, and apply it to anywhere in our future lives, nothing less than success can result from it.”