LYNN — The 436 Lynn English High School graduates at Manning Field Wednesday afternoon constituted a “sea of maroon,” according to acting Principal Anastasia Mower.
They also went through something few other graduating classes experienced.
“It makes me proud to see this sea of maroon,” Mower said in her address to the graduates. “If you’d asked me if we would be able to sit here, I wouldn’t have been sure. Having pushed back and conquered a pandemic, we are one.
“This is the class of patience and that is going to serve you well wherever you go,” said Mower, who is not applying for the permanent position. “It is said that necessity is the mother of invention, and that is you.”
Mower also asked that the graduates remember the human connections — something of which the graduates were deprived over the last year — that come from going to school.
“Look around at your classmates,” she said. “Make eye contact. Smile. And remember that human contact.”
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic all five Lynn public high schools scheduled their graduation ceremonies outdoors at Manning Field. St. Mary’s had its ceremonies in its newly-constructed courtyard outside the school.
Also speaking Wednesday were Mayor Thomas M. McGee and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Patrick Tutwiler.
“You have persevered through a once-in-a-generation pandemic,” McGee said. “That changed the way you did everything.”
“One has to get back up when knocked down, and keep going forward,” said Tutwiler. “You have demonstrated that resilience. I need you to embrace the idea that you are stronger for this. You learned how to learn and grow in different ways.”
Class President Carlos Prudencio greeted the graduates, and told them “this is the best class to ever walk the halls of Lynn English. I want you to be very proud.
“We are sitting here (at Manning Field), and that is the reason why,” he said.
Valedictorian Erignacio Fermin Perez, who is bound for Harvard, gave a good summation of what the Class of 2021 went through over the last year.
“It was March 13, 2020, and the announcement came that there would be no school the next day and everybody cheered,” he said. “Then it became a week. Then it became a month. Then it became the rest of the year. We didn’t see each other.
“But we’re shining bright today,” he said. “What everybody has said here today is true. We are resilient. We encountered uncertainty, but we were resilient. We can face anything.
“And,” Perez said, “we are going to face all that uncertainty again in the future, and we will surmount it as LEHS alumni.”
Salutatorian Samantha Parker kept with the theme.
“We encountered a new world that nobody could have predicted,” she said. “But rather than look at that, I’d much rather look at what we’ve accomplished, and what we have become.”
With a nod to the faculty, Parker said, “our teachers have taught us how to be resilient. And in the next couple of months we will be walking through new doors, whether it’s college, or jobs or the military service, and that’s scary. But we’ll be prepared.”
