Hononegah Community High School honors its 2021 graduates

While friends and family watched the ceremony online, teachers in black robes escorted students in purple robes, some with with gold stoles, to their socially-distanced white chairs on the field for the 102nd Hononegah High School graduation.

After the National Anthem by the Senior Choir, Kelly Converso, 2020-2021 student body president, addressed the assembly, live and virtual, quoting a 1933 letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter going off to boarding school for the first time. Fitzgerald's letter advised her what and what not to worry about. According to Converso, Fitzgerald advised, "Worry about courage."

Principal Chad Dougherty directed the audience's attention to two white chairs in the front, which each held a graduation gown, a diploma cover and a single white rose, in memory of two Hononegah students who tragically did not live to see this day: Ryan Annabelle Panganiban and Turner Owen Howell. Then Dougherty read the names of graduates who have enlisted in the armed forces, and asked all military veterans in the crowd to stand.

Dougherty reported that Hononegah Community High School is ranked 76th in Illinois by U.S. News and World Report, the highest ranking of any school in the Rockford area. In the 2021 graduating class, 90 students graduated summa cum laude (Latin for "with highest honors") with grades higher than 4.0 on a four-point scale, 32 students graduated magna cum laude (with high honors), with grades 3.75-3.99, and 40 students graduated cum laude (with honors) with grades between 3.5 and 3.74.

Dougherty told the graduates, "We know you're going to make the world a better place because while you were here, you made Hononegah a better place."

Dougherty awarded certificates to the students with the top 25 grades. The grade point average (GPA) of the 25 students averaged 4.75, and each had a GPA of at least 4.56.

1. Thomas Ptacin and Brandon McAllister
3. Brendon Wang
4. Ephraim Boomer
5. Axell Boomer and Natalie Williams
7. Maximus Ehrlich and Alex Moore
9. Jacob DePauw
10. Kelli-Rose Converso
11. Alison Murdoch
12. Nathan Halbrader
13. Madilyn McWilliams
14. Ava Cicmansky
15. Madison Gunderson
16. Braxton Brown
17. Lauren Johnston
18. Lila Finnegan
19. Willow Boomer
20. Jade Hoper
21. Mehrem Beshiri
22. Apollo Picot
23. Marlee Vlasnik
24. Malavika Menon
25. Owen Ivanuck

The Senior Choir sang "Seize the Day," from the Disney and Broadway musical Newsies.

Next, retiring English teacher Thomas Reynolds introduced salutatorian Brendon Wang, quoting from a college admissions essay Wang wrote around the Chinese word rongyu ('honor/glory'), how he tried to achieve it, and how his attitudes have changed about it. According to Reynolds, Wang was liberated by the realizations that "no one is capable of being the best at everything" and sometimes the expectations that others have of us, even those closest to us, don't fit what we want and who we are. After that, Wang began attempting activities that might not bring him honor or glory, such as volunteering in a nursing home. He did it first to attend to a family member and then to observe the environment a doctor might work in.  Wang wrote in his essay, "I saw the cruel realities of what all people eventually succumb to."

"When we walk out here, we'll be incoming freshmen again," said Brendon Wang, whether in college or elsewhere. When he arrived at high school as a fourteen-year-old, "all I saw was competition," like a box of cats trying to end up on top. "Standing here today," Wang said, "I know we're no box of cats." Together, he told the class, they had overcome many challenges and "survived a lethal senioritis epidemic that plagues all high schoolers."

Math Team coach Mrs. Janet Kagan introduced Brandon McAllister, the first of two valedictorians who tied for the highest grade point average in the class. She told how Brandon had driven his own academic success in school. Though both his parents were supportive, his mother had not been familiar with the U.S. educational system. Brandon served as a student tutor for several years. "Brandon didn't even take summers off," Kagan reported, as last year he began using his fluency in Spanish to tutor a student with math.

In his speech,  Brandon McAllister thanked the administration, the faculty, the parents, and the "siblings who are only here because their parents made them come." He recalled the many experiences of high school: being confronted by cockroaches, forcibly learning about the great outdoors during fire drills, and hearing  about various fights in the bathrooms. He thanked the teachers for "showing us just how little we understood of the world when we walked into their classrooms. "

Tennis coach Harrison Hearne introduced Thomas Ptacin, the second valedictorian, but not before pointing out that the top three students play in the top three positions on the tennis team. He invited the audience to calculate the probability of that happening by mere chance. "I think you know where this is going," Hearne  said, "I truly look forward to working with your children at tennis camp soon." Thomas Ptacin, who will be studying aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois, joked that this last year of remote learning "went by in a Zoom."

School Board President David Kirlinkus invited the graduates, 50 years from now in 2071, to remember what made their experience special. For example, Hononegah hasn't had an outdoor graduation ceremony for many years, and only one other class had a ferris wheel and funnel cakes at their senior prom. "The pandemic has shown us not to take anything or anyone for granted," he said, and he encouraged the graduates to "seek to spread light not heat."

Finally, the speeches completed, Principal Chad Dougherty, Superintendent Michael Dugan, members of the Board of Education, Mr. and Mrs. Hobb, and administrators and staff began distributing diplomas as quickly as dignity allowed.

Technical difficulties with Facebook Live caused many viewers to miss much of the last part of the ceremony, as it froze up while students from the middle of the alphabet were receiving their diplomas.  The school's Facebook page has two videos for replay. On the first video, which cuts off after about an hour, the list of students begins with Kailani Aaby and ends abruptly with Jenna Blaske. On a second video, the list commences with Kirsten Fisher and continues to the end of the alphabet and the ceremony. Replays of the complete event are available from the NFHS Network, but the audio is faint.

The band concluded with Jeremiah Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary (The Prince of Denmark's March).