I think it’s fair to say that you haven’t lived until you’ve attended a graduation ceremony for Racine’s Walden III High School.  Forget everything you’ve come to believe about such events: that they’re long, stiff, stuffy and boring.  Walden III does graduation the same way it does education:

with a sense of flare and fun, embracing and celebrating the uniqueness of each and every student.

Of course, it helps when you have a graduating class of 67- and Walden exploits its modest size with a deeply personal approach to everything that happens within its walls.  And when it come time to celebrate their graduates, they are just as personal and maybe even more so.  Each graduate is individually introduced by their home group teacher, with a word about what makes them special as well as something about what they plan to do next.   And after being handed their diploma,  each student is welcome to step to the podium to say few words.  Almost all of them take the opportunity to thank their family, teachers, friends – and some do it so eloquently and expressively that it’s hard not to cry. . . even when it’s a complete stranger up there who we’ll probably never see again.   And when there is someone up there who you know and love,  it’s SO nice that each graduate gets more than just a quick walk across the stage.   And by the way,  the introductions given by the teachers are every bit as moving,  and some of the teachers actually begin to cry as they talk about some of these students with whom they’ve grown very close.   It’s quite astonishing and incredibly moving.

One essential element to Walden’s graduation ceremony is the humorous yet heartfelt work of the two emcees,  who are elected by their classmates- typically one male and one female.   And Kathy and I were so pleased and proud that the female emcee this year was none other than our god-daughter,  Anneka Barrow.   And I hadn’t realized until this year that the emcees are responsible for writing all of their humorous banter through the evening;  there’s no secret committee backstage writing it for them.   And Anneka and her partner (I don’t remember his name) did such a nice job of introducing every teacher both hilariously and respectfully-  which is one of the trickiest balancing acts of them all.   And it was largely thanks to them that the two and a half hours FLEW by.   (Believe it or not.)

There were all kinds of tremendously moving moments – such as when a couple of different students with special needs stepped up to make their remarks and there was dead silence in the room. . . not a single chuckle or any other gesture of disrespect. . . followed by a wave of heartfelt applause. Walden has a glorious legacy of inclusiveness with students of all shapes and stripes, and this was just one more indication of that.  We were also very moved when a young woman named Anna from Holy Communion received her diploma,  because we vividly remember all of the serious heart surgeries she underwent as a youngster.  To see her up on that stage, looking so beautiful and vibrant and ready for the next chapter of her life was a high point of the night.   A young friend of ours named Alex (who will be a freshman at Carthage this fall) spoke so movingly about the support of his family;  his remarks were among the most beautiful of the whole night. From other students we may have heard about their pain of losing a parent or the joy of having just had a baby or how much they appreciated having learned the difference between a “phrase” and a “clause.”  (I love that.) What we probably heard more often than anything else was “thank you for pushing me” or “thank you for not giving up on me.”

But of course, our main reason for being there was to celebrate Anneka,  who is one of the most incredible young woman we’ve ever had the pleasure to know.   She is so kind-hearted,  so courageous,  so sensitive, so generous,  so appreciative, so mature and responsible . . . and yet so ready to laugh and so good at helping others to laugh.  She just knows how to make her little corner of the world so much brighter than it would otherwise be,  and there’s no doubt whatsoever that she will continue to be that kind of person wherever life takes her from here.    And I wish I could say that we who are her godparents deserve most of the credit for how wonderful she has turned out to be – but honestly we feel like we’ve learned as much from her as she has from us.   Those sound like goopy words that belong in a Hallmark, but they happen to be true.   And when it’s all said and done,  we are just two of the many many people who feel so blessed to have had Anneka in our lives.  And trust me:  that list of blessed people is only going to get longer and longer.