My hope for the Class of 2025: Keep rising to the tasks ahead of you

Walking the Beat

This is going to be a tough one tonight, folks. Despite their being so few in number, the Class of 2025 has had an outsized impact upon yours truly and I have been honored to have covered them from start to finish. And that's not just from their freshman year, which began in my first year as editor, but really the very start of schooling for anyone in the class who was in pre-kindergarten when I returned to the Leader 14 years ago. Heck, I would wager that in my very first year here in '07, I probably placed some of the class's birth announcements or "Stork Reports" in our paper. So, in an odd sort of way we've been following the same path this entire time.

But time marches on, and tonight this extraordinary group of young people will march into the Memorial Gym and then about an hour or so later will march out into their lives. In the past I have sometimes wondered just how prepared our grads are to take on the world – and I don't mean from a schooling standpoint but rather from a "school of hard knocks" point of view. I've lived on the West Coast, the Rockies (obviously), the Upper Midwest, the South and the Mid-Atlantic, and I can say with certainty that this little valley of ours is a very different kind of place. There's a kind of chaotic indifference out there in the world that you just don't find here, and that may be jarring.

But I think this class will be more than up to the task, because they've already been through so much as it is. Their first year at AJSHS as seventh graders, 2019-2020, was the start of covid.

Before that they lost a beloved classmate – I can still remember how, as young elementary students, they were so good at including J'da Lemm in everything. But what stands out to me the most is how well prepared and well organized this year's group of honors students was at conducting our many candidates' forums. When we had our initial meeting it was clear from the start that they were ready to go just from the questions they had prepared, and by time their final one rolled around last month for the school board election, well like their teacher Megan Casey told me, as soon as they heard there was another one coming up they got right to it like it was just another daily task.

There will be a great many more such tasks this class will face in the years ahead, challenges both ordinary and extraordinary, and I think they'll be more than ready for what life throws at them. I say that partly because of who they are and the quality of people they've demonstrated themselves to be, but also because of what they'll bring with them from here: They'll be bringing each other, and not just in their memories. Stay connected, Class of 2025. That's my message to you. No matter what may happen with this crazy messed up world of ours, you won't have to walk your path alone.