The FGR Class of 2024 started high school amidst a global pandemic, their freshman year peppered with extended periods of online schooling. During the course of their high school years, life and learning eventually returned to normal and this spring, they graduated during traditional Commencement Exercises held at Hill Auditorium on the evening of May 23. The 121 graduates gathered to celebrate their vast accomplishments having solidified their future goals in the prior months.
This year’s graduates are heading to college (96.4%), the firefighting academy, potential sports careers, and one will head directly to the work force. Fifty-six percent (56%) of students who applied were accepted to the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, including Tomas O’Meara who was invited to join the Wolverine football team as a preferred walk-on. Thirty-two percent (32%) of this class opted to continue their education in a Catholic environment as they chose institutions such as The University of Notre Dame, Catholic University of America, Marquette University, Ave Maria University, Benedictine College, and Franciscan University of Steubenville, among others. Four students have chosen to attend Hillsdale College. All told, the Class of 2024 earned more than $13,970,000 in scholarship monies.
During their four years of high school, this class participated in countless athletic competitions, concerts, plays and musicals, art shows, and robotics competitions. They attended all-school Mass twice weekly through their sophomore, junior, and senior years. They were some of the first to participate in Households at FGR and saw the return of Special Olympics Field Day as the entire school hosted a fun day for adults and older children with disabilities.
Mother and writer, Arwen Mosher is completing her first of several high school “cycles”. Her oldest child, daughter Camilla, is a graduate of the class of 2024, and Mrs. Mosher reflected on her experience of “senior spring.”
She writes:
Parents of the class of 2024 sent our children to high school in unprecedented circumstances. Under the cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic, our kids had missed the final months of their eighth-grade years, robbed of the closing traditions, graduation, and a “normal” summer before high school. In the fall of 2020, as we prepared to send our children to school, we stocked up on all the normal school supplies plus face masks and extra hand sanitizer.
I remember feeling unsure that school would start until it did. My class of 2024 daughter is my oldest child, and I valued every starting-high-school moment that felt as I imagined these moments might feel under non-pandemic circumstances. We bought uniforms and books, we took pictures outside on the first day of school, and we hoped our children could keep their heads above water as the winds of pandemic upheaval continued to swirl through our communities and into the halls of our little school.
Our daughter adjusted more quickly than I did. She filled out her daily health screening on the ride to school, got her temperature taken at the door, came home talking about all the various exposures and quarantines among her classmates, and took it in stride every time the school was forced to close temporarily and she had to take classes on Zoom from her bedroom.
That acceptance and adjustment to the way things were is part of the story of the class of 2024: we started on a low note, but ended on lovely, triumphant chords of celebration. Experiencing them for the first time, I was impressed and moved by the end-of-high-school rituals that FGR has in place for the graduating seniors and for their parents. It echoed so much of what we have loved about FGR over the last four years: a focus on loving and supporting the whole person, on celebrating every individual child of God while calling them forward to be the people He created them to be.
One of my favorite things about our Catholic faith is liturgy, the way it brings a pattern to our weeks and to our seasons and adds beauty and solemnity and truth to our day-to-day lives. During the final weeks of my daughter’s senior year, as I appreciated the various ceremonies that built toward the final send-off, I thought to myself several times, “Of course this Catholic school knows how to do this well.” My graduation from public high school was good, but I remember it feeling anticlimactic: we had poured four years of life and effort and pain and joy into the place, and at the end of the road they hurriedly handed us our diplomas and waved us out the door.
Here at FGR, by contrast, the observances began at the start of the fourth quarter with “senior privileges,” as the seniors were allowed to sit together at the front of the chapel during Mass, to eat lunch outside, to wear college shirts to school instead of uniform shirts. Nothing crazy, just enough to set them apart and to remind them of what was coming. Then, at the end of April, the Senior Blessing Mass: instead of making the distribution of caps and gowns a mere administrative task, FGR celebrates the moment. I was fortunate to be able to attend this Mass and surprised by how much it moved me. Faculty presented each senior with their own cap and gown, and then the students turned and bowed their heads to be blessed by the chaplain, who sprinkled every one of them with holy water. This took a while, but that wasn’t a bad thing; I was grateful to pause and appreciate the milestone and ponder all the ways God’s divine providence had carried us through the past four years.
After Mass I got to see Father Vinton, and I asked him if his arm was sore. He nodded and grinned. “But it was very worth it.” Through that interaction and so many others in the weeks of May, I could see the FGR staff’s love for our kids shining through. We’ve poured eighteen years of everything we have into these precious children of ours, but the staff have given four years to help them learn to love God, love others, love learning, and pursue excellence. Through all the final rituals of my daughter’s senior year, it was clear to me how seriously the staff takes that mission, and how much the students mean to them.
Through May, our calendar was filled with our daughter’s various senior events. Members of the graduating class donned their caps and gowns and marched in to take seats up front at the school’s yearly Honors Convocation. The boys dapper in suits and the girls sparkling in gowns, they partied and danced at their senior prom. They enjoyed the thrills of their official senior trip to Cedar Point. They were treated to Lee’s Chicken at the senior luncheon, where the director of alumni relations reminded them of the wonderful community they were about to join, and the president and principal bestowed words of congratulations and encouragement. The luncheon also included a time of “honorable closure” in which students could take the microphone to name and thank other members of the community – faculty, staff, and/or fellow students – who had positively influenced their time in high school. Later, after their last final exam, seniors savored brunch together before rehearsing for their commencement ceremony.
Suddenly it was graduation week, the true end of the high school journey. As a parent, I had anticipated this with both joy and apprehension, and I had wondered if both the Baccalaureate Mass and the Commencement ceremony would whirl by without giving me a chance to hold the moments and feel their weight. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole experience.
Our graduating daughter has four younger brothers, and part of me thought it might feel too onerous to get everyone dressed up and drag them out of the house two nights in a row, for the Mass on Wednesday and Commencement on Thursday. But while I won’t claim there was zero fidgeting by said brothers, both evenings were nicely paced to give parents time for appreciation but also be manageable for families. The Mass was beautiful and joyful, and a good reminder to give God glory first for all our children’s gifts and accomplishments. It was followed by a reception that gave parents a chance to connect and reminisce, seniors a chance to find friends and make plans, and younger siblings a chance to run around while devouring cupcakes. A slideshow of baby pictures of the graduates, collected in advance, played on a projector screen while volunteers continually replenished the delicious refreshments. Like so many other parts of our four years at FGR, the event felt thoughtful, designed with families’ needs in mind.
I’d been saying all year that I was “not ready” for graduation, and when Thursday, May 23th rolled around that was certainly still true, but less so than I’d expected. All the ceremony that had gone before, the celebration of my daughter and her classmates, had prepared me for this moment, when it got real. We entered historic Hill Auditorium early to save seats (surprisingly easy, as there is plenty of seating) and I admired its polished wood and soaring ceilings as I prepared myself to watch my daughter cross the stage and take her first steps into the next phase of her life. What came next soothed my heart and helped me process this huge milestone. So many commencements are somehow both terribly boring and not solemn enough, but the FGR ceremony managed to hit exactly the right balance. Through the prayers and recognitions, I laughed and cried and was so grateful for ninety minutes to sit and take it all in.
We started my daughter’s high school years with trepidation, and it was a gift to close them with peace and joy. Each member of the class of 2024 had a chance to cross the stage and be recognized, as the culmination of a collection of rituals meant to mark this vital point in their lives. No matter what the past four years contained – and I’m sure that every student’s high school years had plenty of challenges mixed in with the triumphs – these ceremonies gave us a chance to pause. Job well done, we say in this moment, to our children and to ourselves. Let us be grateful for everything God has given us. And let us pray that the years ahead hold many more things as good as this.