SAUGUS — Humor was the order of the evening Friday at Stackpole Field for the 150th graduation of Saugus High School.
Five speakers from the class, along with Principal Michael Hasham, reflected on the COVID-19 pandemic, as most graduating classes have done this spring. But the 171 Saugus students made it obvious, by their speeches, that humor got them through a lot of it.
Hasham said he was at a loss to find the words to describe the just-completed school year.
“Different,” he said. “That’s probably the best word I’d describe. It was about as far from tradition as we would have expected last May. But I truly believe that this year’s graduates are better prepared.”
Salutatorian Charles Denovellis summed up the uncertainty of the last year and a half by saying, “there are a lot of things in life that you just don’t know. There’s a lot that I don’t know.
“My friends would always tell me that I’m the dumbest smart guy they’ve ever known,” said Denovellis, whose twin brother, Christopher, also spoke as the student council president.
Getting more serious, he said, “we will experience a big life question and we won’t know the answer,” he said. “Not knowing can be scary, embarrassing and frustrating. But not knowing is OK. It’s a natural human reaction.”
Charles Denovellis and Valedictorian Michael Kenny formed a kind of mutual admiration society on the stage as well Friday, as both said it was an honor competing against the other for the No. 1 and 2 rank in the graduating class.
Kenny did not give the standard valedictory. First, he said, “I’ve known for most of this year that I was going to have to give a speech, but I did what all high school kids do. I procrastinated.”
As time got closer, he said, he decided to record some of his classmates telling him what their best memories of school were. One said it was taking pictures with the teachers on the last day of school. Another talked about staying after school until well after dark making posters for different events. And a third remembers his drama club taking a play all the way to the state competition.
“My favorite memory is right now,” he said. “We’ve grown, and we’ve established bonds that will never break.”
Kenny concluded his remarks by saying that while he thinks Saugus often gets a bad rap, “you can tell anyone who says that that I will be parking my car in Harvard Yard this fall.”
Said National Honor Society President Vincent Coluccio, “even though COVID kept us out of school, we made the best of it. And I can confidently say that we are prepared for anything that comes our way.”
Christopher Denovellis told the class that “if this pandemic taught us anything, it taught us to cherish togetherness. We were together after being forced to stay apart for so long. We hugged each other tighter through the tears.
“We had so much of what we’d hoped for stripped away,” he said. “But Class of 2021, you showed it was OK. Everything we had to accept, we accepted together.”
Wrapping up the speaking portion of the ceremony, Class President Emma Peacock stuck with the theme.
“Dad,” she said, looking for him in the bleachers, “I know you hounded me about not leaving this speech until the last minute. But I’m going to have to tell you that I didn’t start writing it until Wednesday.”
Peacock said she didn’t want to talk about COVID, “but it was all around us, wasn’t it?
“I mean, we went from April vacation to 12 months,” she said. “But these last three months (when they were back in school full time) were some of the best. We missed out on a lot of things. But here we are, without masks, which seems so wrong, but also seems so right.”
