WALL TOWNSHIP — On Friday night, June 14, the Wall High School (WHS) community, including the graduating class of 2024, faculty, school board members, families and friends, came together to celebrate four years of dedication and effort at the school’s 64th annual commencement ceremony.
A total of 221 senior students entered the gymnasium to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance” before choir students sang “The Star Spangled Banner,” followed by a rendition of The Beatles’ “In My Life” from graduate Zackary Nissen.
Members of the township committee, including Committeeman Daniel Becht and Mayor Kevin Orender, and board of education (BOE) members, such as Ralph Addonizio, Kenneth Wondrack, James Maliff and Mairin Barbiere, were seated beside the podium to witness the ceremony and congratulate members of the outgoing class.
“I hope that you will feel proud of all that you accomplished and I hope that you will be filled with a great sense of joy when you think about your friends, coaches and teachers who were on this journey with you,” WHS Principal Kevin Davis told the students.
Davis continued, reminding the senior class to keep a positive mind as it enters post-graduation. “I encourage you not to be afraid or scared of this new chapter in your life. Don’t let the world or anyone around you extinguish that flame of optimism that comes with youth. Don’t let that spirit of hope fade among you, our future leaders of our community, our country and our world. I have no doubt there will be challenges ahead; I have great confidence that you will meet those challenges with determination and open minds and open hearts.”
Claire White, the class valedictorian, told her fellow graduates “If time is luck and you are sitting here today, you are lucky because you have been blessed with four years of time; time to make memories and to make mistakes, time to grow up with your best friends, time to learn, time to think and time to waste.”
“We don’t know where we’ll be in 10 years or one year or even tomorrow,” White said. “But if we’re here, wherever we are, we’ll be lucky because that means we will have a time to figure it out and like these past four years at Wall, it will have been time spent wisely with the people that we love.”
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