Entering their next stage

The Baltimore Sun

They are out in the world now -- although still under your roof, eating your food, using your washing machine, still not making their bed, still running up text message bills. Except for all that, your high school graduates are finally on their own.

High schools across Maryland are holding commencements this season. Graduation time anywhere remains an enduring ritual, a formula of processionals, addresses, interludes, introductions, speeches, tassel turning and a whole lot of names read very carefully. Graduation ceremonies rain cliches and advice. Yet, the old customs can still feel new.

For the first time in its history, Merriweather Post Pavilion was the site of five continuous ceremonies in one day -- 1,734 graduates, thousands more family and friends, 80 minutes of "Pomp and Circumstance," 20 confiscated beach balls, countless and elusive air horns, and five appearances by one indefatigable county executive.

From 8:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday, the Howard County school system, with a lot of help from its friends at Merriweather, seamlessly staged a procession of graduations. Three more ceremonies are scheduled today at the pavilion, but you should have been there Tuesday.

"Life is to enjoy -- not to get through," Howard County Board of Education member Lawrence Cohen told graduates.

Life was both Tuesday.

8:15 a.m.

Cool blue morning at Merriweather. As with rock acts, there is also the load-in for graduation day. Seniors from Wilde Lake High in Columbia have loaded into Merriweather. Back stage (oh, this hallowed ground where Hendrix, Joplin, The Who played -- and there, the "Ronstadt" dressing room), Ronnie Bohn, graduation coordinator, looks like a roadie for Grad Fest. The former principal at Mount Hebron High will be here all day and night. She has a chair with her name on it.

8:30 a.m.

The drill begins: Men in dark suits ask guests to refrain from applauding when their child's name is called. This is to maintain the dignity of the occasion. This will be roundly ignored. Somewhere in the back rows of the pavilion, air horns are cocked and ready. "Pomp and Circumstance" ushers in the first Class of 2007 for the day. Forget the giant video screens, parents twist in their seats in search of their grad. They all kind of look alike in those caps and gowns. Then, a quick wave and quicker smile. There she is. There he is. Can it be? Eighteen years ago hurling toward this moment.

"It is now our turn to dream big," Michelle McGrain tells her classmates.

"We are tomorrow's leaders today," Matthew Dunnagan tells his classmates.

"I'll keep this brief," says Howard County Executive Ken Ulman in the first of his five appearances. "We need your ideas. We need your solutions and innovations. Above all in the days and weeks ahead, be safe."

9:10 a.m.

A voice in the crowd: "MOMMY LOVES YOU!"

9:20 a.m.

Principal Restia Whitaker invokes The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. He invokes The Lion King. He earns a standing ovation. And, by the way, his wife is having contractions. Janet Siddique of the Howard County Board of Education begins to award the degrees but not before issuing one of the great truths of high school graduation. You will probably remember only two words: your name.

Changing colors

10:10 a.m.

Three hundred and five graduates of Wilde Lake move their tassels from the left side to the right. Merriweather erupts. "Pomp and Circumstance" leads them out, quickly. Ronnie Bohn and another coordinator, Theresa Farson, hit the stage. Out with Wilde Lake's green and gold colors, in with Hammond High's maroon and gold. The palms and lilies stay. Fresh bottled water for the mostly fresh guests. Name tags on the folding chairs.

A truck arrives bearing fragile equipment for George Benson, but the jazz guitarist is not performing at Hammond's graduation. Benson and Al Jarreau are playing the next day at the Capital Jazz Fest. Meaning, this stage needs to be cleared by tonight. Meaning, after the jazz festival leaves town, three more graduations will be held Thursday. Meaning, maybe these kids can appreciate what the grown-ups are doing for their "five seconds of glory," as Bohn says.

11:00 a.m.

Leeann Beall-Read, an English teacher at Hammond High, has learned to pronounce 312 names. She is not nervous. "I used to teach speech." Hammond's kids have been loaded in. "Last year, our ceremony was an hour, 22 minutes.

"We're going for a record this year."

11:30 a.m.

"Pomp and Circumstance" right on time. Principal Sterlind Burke Sr. looms behind the clamped, black stage curtain. Many of these students had him as their middle school principal. This is his first commencement speech at Hammond. "If we do it right, it should touch everyone's hearts."

Seth Orensky tells his classmates, "For the fourth year, we were the loudest class at the pep rally."

Roxanne Bublitz tells her classmates, "We are entering a world without a curriculum."

Ken Ulman briefly says, "Please, challenge the status quo. We need you to help solve our challenges."

Burke dusts off his "Shoes Speech" -- he holds up baby shoes his son once wore, a reminder of how fast the years go by. Feel the presence of others, he says. Relatives gone. Friends not here.

12:15 p.m.

"I will miss you," the principal says.

Beall-Read, the English teacher, deserves some sort of certificate of merit. She hasn't botched a name. She nails the phonetic likes of Ishmawiyl Shuayb Jackson and Gulnaz Hanif Vahora. As she continues to excel, a few grandparents in the crowd get up to stretch their legs, then return to tinkering with their camera phones. "When I graduated, I didn't have a clue," an older man says, chucking at himself.

12:58 p.m.

Beall-Read calls the last name: Ushma Samir Zaveri. Tassels are flipped. Hammond's ceremony clocked in at about 90 minutes and probably didn't break last year's mark. In the parking lot -- past the fresh-cut roses and disposable camera stands -- Hammond's Samantha Stitt briefly ponders the meaning of graduating and speaks for many when she tells friends:

"I'm just starving. Let's go eat."

2:28 p.m.

"We're short a box of diploma covers," says Bohn. The first glitch. Centennial High School needs covers A.S.A.P.

2:36 p.m.

"Pomp and Circumstance" waits for no diploma cover. Centennial's Class of 2007 parades into the pavilion. Bohn dispatches a runner to get more diploma covers, so they won't have to fudge. It's breezy -- no one should faint today. Heck, these parents probably dragged their kids to a James Taylor or Jimmy Buffett concert here at Merriweather in that far distant past.

"We need your solutions, your innovations, ideas and values," says Centennial alum Ken Ulman. And something about challenging the status quo.

Time flies

"We are all in the prime of our life," says student speaker Alexandra Grusell. These graduates could well forget everything said today, but we needed to hear that. They might be sitting here one day, watching their own children and listening to their own county executive. And these children, now adults, will also wonder where the time went -- and how long will it take to get out of the parking lot.

3:15 p.m.

Under the shade of beech trees, way up on the lawn, two sisters wait for one name to be called.

"They're calling it all crazy," says Louise Johnston, 79. "Wish they'd read it alphabetically," says Kathy Brown, 85.

They want to hear the name Alona Lawson, who Johnston's daughter adopted in 1984 from Lithuania. She didn't speak a bit of English and cried when she was given a bath because the orphanage in Lithuania used lye in its baby shampoo. Alona's parents had died of tuberculosis. Her sister, Anna, was adopted into the same American family. She's a junior at Centennial. Next year, the sisters plan to be back at the park bench under the beech trees with perhaps the best view of the show.

Alona Lawson ...

"There you go!" Brown says.

"There she is!" Johnston says.

Both sisters smiling for the graduate. Time to leave. "We parked God knows where," says Johnston.

4:02 p.m.

Margaret Breihan maneuvers her wheelchair to the front of the stage for the "Turning of the Tassels." The breeze has died down in the pavilion.

"I'm pretty scared, pretty nervous and pretty hot," she says. "I've heard that senior year is the best year. Please, please, prove that statement wrong.

"Class of 2007, turn your tassels!"

Six beach balls reported confiscated, but two seniors got their sunglasses past the backstage crew. Ronnie Bohn can live with that.

Thanks to Elgar

5:25 p.m.

OK, so how long does a band need to keep "Pomp and Circumstance" going?

"Up to 10 minutes -- with a repeat or two built in," says William String, band director at Long Reach High in Columbia. Thank composer Edward Elgar for the resplendent march and its rarely heard lyrics, "Land of hope and glory, Mother of the free, How shall we extol thee, Who are born of thee..."

5:35 p.m.

String conducts "Pomp and Circumstance," which will proceed for 12 minutes -- the time it takes 323 Long Reach graduates to take their seats.

In commencement news, Ken Ulman gets a bye. Rick Leventhal, a Fox News correspondent, is the featured speaker. The war reporter recalls his graduation day when he was so sick he had to be hospitalized and miss his graduation keg party. The doctor told him it was just a bad case of indigestion.

"And I've been full of hot air ever since, which has helped me at my job at FOX News." He asks for and receives a round of applause for U.S. service men and women fighting in Iraq.

6:08 p.m.

To quote John Wayne, quoting student speaker Margaret Nam, "Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway."

Principal Edmund Evans came in with this class four years ago.

"Don't screw up and make me look bad."

7:20 p.m.

Among the now graduated seniors at Long Reach, 21-year-old Bert Chen had perhaps the hardest road. The young man suffers from autism and cerebral palsy. His special education teacher, 73-year-old Louis Redd (in his Johns Hopkins cap and gown), walked, arm-in-arm, with Chen as he accepted his diploma.

"He was unsteady. But at my age, I am unsteady, too. Everybody thought he was helping me," Redd says. Everything went smoothly until Redd's gown caught the steps leading off the stage. "I thought we both would go down in a blaze of glory."

Chen's teacher tries to say goodbye to him on the lawn at Merriweather. Chen, now bound for adult services, says nothing. He doesn't look up. Redd takes his hand and repeats his goodbye. As if a switch turns on, Chen springs a big smile and hugs his high school teacher.

"I love you, buddy," Redd says.

8:27 p.m.

Cool again at Merriweather, where Jackson Browne recorded "Running on Empty" 30 years ago. Traffic has finally caught up with Graduation Fest. The first delay is announced -- a whopping 15 minutes. Barbara Heiser of Ellicott City can wait. Her senior at Mount Hebron High, Cynthia Grace, has been loaded in with the rest of her class. A tight group, her mother says, a tight, fun, feisty class.

8:45 p.m.

The biggest, loudest crowd of the day -- maybe 2,000 to 3,000 people -- as "Pomp and Circumstance" takes its penultimate curtain call. "GO CINDY!" says a thrilled mother as Cynthia Grace Heiser walks down the aisle. Back stage, Veronica "Ronnie" Bohn has traded her T-shirt for a dress. She'll be on stage with her former colleagues at Mount Hebron, where she was principal until last year.

9:00 p.m.

Bohn takes a well-deserved bow.

9:10 p.m.

Ken Ulman.

9:15 p.m.

"That's my daughter. Bottom row," says Heiser, pointing out Cindy in the Senior Ensemble, as it performs "Time to Say Goodbye."

9:45 p.m.

Beach balls confiscated. Additional beach balls covertly inflated and batted. Student speaker Thomas Daniel Walker perhaps speaks for all graduates when he says "to drink a metaphysical smoothie of blended emotions."

10:05 p.m.

Air horns sound seemingly after every one of Mount Hebron's 402 graduates are named. To the inventor of air horns: Please report to detention.

10:45 p.m.

Will the Vikings of Mount Hebron make Columbia's 11 p.m. sound curfew? Will George Benson even know what happened today on this stage?

10:59 p.m.

The last name is called, and on behalf of everyone, allow us to personally thank Anastasiya Zubilova.

11:00 p.m.

SGA president Morgan Blake Harrington tells her classmates to simmer down. One more graduation tradition to go. Now, left to right with your tassels. Then, all pomp and circumstance breaks out. It's all over except for the traffic -- and one more brief speech.

To the 1,734 young men and women who graduated tonight and to graduates everywhere this month:

May your senior year not be your best.

May you challenge the status quo.

May you save baby shoes.

May you drink metaphysical smoothies.

And may you always saddle up.

rob.hiaasen@baltsun.com

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