Mount Vernon-Enola graduates have miles to go, promises to keep

Mount Vernon-Enola High School's Class of 2008 stood facing the future Friday night and were shepherded into it by the faculty of a school system many had known since kindergarten.

The class, 26 strong at graduation time, has experienced the highs and lows of young life, valedictorian Ashley Hawkins and Salutatorian Brittney Jacobs said in their addresses.

"To arrive at this day, we have all had to endure misfortune and loss over the years," Jacobs said, adding she has been inspired by the strength and resilience many in her class had shown.

High school principal Rudy Beavers said after the ceremony that Jacobs has shown plenty of strength and resilience of her own. Her boyfriend, John Paul Stout, a recent graduate of the school, died in a vehicle accident in December. Stout's sister, Nora Stout, was among the graduates Friday night.

But the night was a time for celebration and remembrance of the good times the class has shared. The sometimes less-than-occasional tardiness, playful acts of mischief and the fact that the young men of the class of '08 tended to burst into song every once in a while (Cole Porter's "In the Still of the Night," intriguingly).

Hawkins said in her address the class shouldn't look at the end of their high school years as the end of a chapter or the top of a mountain. They've got a long way to go to reach the pinnacle, she said, and some of the journey hasn't been upwards.

Hawkins said she views high school as a basketball game, with officials watching the class' every move, coaches giving guidance, fans cheering them on and challenging opponents pushing them to show their best.

Graduation speaker Jack McCandless, a Mount Vernon youth minister, quoted two Robert Frost poems he said were inevitable at a graduation ceremony: "The Road Less Travelled" and "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening."

The graduates still have miles to go and promises to keep, he said to the graduates, and difficult choices to make.

(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)