LYNN — Lynn Vocational Technical Institute graduates fumbled for the high school memories they lost from parts of two years of quarantine, and Monday the floor at Manning Field belonged to them.
“What a ride it’s been,” Principal Fred Gallo said, summing up the experiences of the class.
Quarantine seemed to haunt Class of 2022 even at their graduation — Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson could not be present due to COVID isolation requirements, and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Patrick Tutwiler delivered the mayor’s high praise and well wishes.
In his speech, Tutwiler recommended that the graduates develop their own set of simple principles to guide them through life. For that he presented a concept of the “three be’s” (be good, be brief, and be seated), that can be applied to everything from speech writing, to working the “way into the fabric of your day-to-day living.”
Along with traditional be’s of being kind, humble, inspirational, and resilient, Tutwiler also touched upon several be’s that were not so obvious, such as, “be someone’s hero,” “be the solution,” and “be patient.”
“Class of 2022, the world needs doers; strong, intelligent participants who not only identify problems, but who have the appetite and the skills to solve them,” said Tutwiler. “The world needs doers. Be the solution.”
Tutwiler said that applying all three of these uncommon be’s on a daily basis would almost guarantee that no matter the environment or the situation, the graduates “will leave it better than” they “found it,” later in their lives.
And that resonated with Gallo’s suggestion to look at the graduation ceremony not as the end, but as the beginning — the commencement. And with that, the graduates began their speeches — some funny, some touching, and some stumbling, but they knew the audience loved them anyway.
“We love you,” screamed someone at the stadium before Angelina Kim’s salutatorian address.
Kim then said that she did not want to be trivial, but the lesson she learned from her school experience was that “sometimes you have to try things twice,” while Wesley Morales, in his president’s address, said that the one thing he learned from high school was “to make the most out of what we have.”
“You never know what could happen. You simply could just be enjoying life and suddenly have everything flips upside down,” he said.
Wesley then reminded the class of Michael Jordan’s famous quote, that some people “want it to happen, some people wish it would happen, others make it happen.” And that sounded especially important in the light of James Aguilar’s valedictorian address, who said that “life does not wait.”
“Just like we made it through these past four years, what’s to say we cannot make it past four more,” said Aguilar.
The ceremony ended with the speech of commencement speaker Ebony White — a 2001 graduate of LVTI and a 2017 inductee into the Alumni Hall of Fame. White was an All-Star basketball athlete, and in 2011 she was honored as the first female to reach the 1,000-point milestone. She received her bachelor’s degree in communications in Newbury College and moved to a master program at Suffolk University.
She now holds a position of senior director, overseeing nine programs of local non-profit Centerboard in the sphere of at-risk youth and young women at-risk of exploitation and human trafficking. She is also a member of the “Stop the Violence Lynn” committee.
White said that at her graduation she would never have guessed that once she would become a commencement speaker to it, but she was willing to share her truth, because it was her truth that made her the woman she was today.
At school she was facing some of the most difficult challenges a student might face — both of her parents were incarcerated, and although she had the support of her friends, she never felt complete, said White. She admitted she left her stress and trauma at the school basketball field, and she shared her story to teach the graduates one thing.
“Only you can be the author of your own story.”
Oksana Kotkina can be reached at [email protected].
