5/10/24 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott
Photo Caption: Our New Playground!
Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,
It is the season of graduation. Many colleges had their ceremonies this weekend. The High schools will all present their diplomas within weeks and our very own eighth grade class of 2024 will conclude their time at Our Lady of Peace with our graduation Mass on Thursday, May 30.
There has been a reminder in the media about the college class of 2024 that they did not get to have a high school graduation ceremony, at least in the traditional sense. There were drive-thru graduations and pick up your diploma non-graduations. There was no spring sports season or prom for the seniors. Their year ended prematurely on March 13 instead of in May in 2020. We are all still feeling the impact of that time.
At Our Lady of Peace our eighth-grade class of 2020 was not exempt from the exclusions of the beginning of COVID. We all left school on that Friday in March happy for an extended spring break of multiple weeks. Little did we know that school doors would be locked for the remainder of the year.
Our teachers and students did the best that they could in holding zoom classes to try and finish what still needed to be taught. I think especially of Mrs. Peggy Pinckney who finished a long and distinguished career here at OLP teaching her first graders via computer rather than in the classroom at the end of the hall that was her second home.
For our eighth graders the premature finish meant that they lost their 8th grade trip, their spring musical, their last track and field day and, of course, their graduation. We videotaped a Mass with Father Dooley and then I read the names of our class of 2020 one at a time into the camera. It was a surreal experience and certainly held little of the joy that should have been part of the evening.
Of all the pictures on the wall in the cafeteria only the class of 2020 stands out as a composite picture from the yearbook rather than a group photo, which, for most of our history, has been staged on our front steps.
That spring of 2020 seems like a different time that none of us will ever forget. Now, suddenly those eighth graders are planning to graduate from high school: Bishop Watterson, St. Francis DeSales, St. Charles, Cristo Rey. Although I don’t have a full accounting of all our senior alumni, it seems that they have flourished during the years from that closed-down spring, and they are ready to take that next leap into school or trade or work which will lead them to their futures.
On May 23 we have invited the class of 2020 back to our building to have breakfast with our class of 2024. Some we have seen frequently over these last four years, some not at all. I hope that each one will come back and be together one last time at the school where many of them spent nine years of their lives.
At some point, we will take a picture of them on the front steps of the school. They will be older and taller and wiser. They are not the 14-year-olds who left us abruptly on March 13, 2020, but young men and women. This picture will take its place next to their yearbook composite, standing out as the only group of high school seniors on our wall.
As with every class of graduates this year, our own at Our Lady of Peace, our high school seniors, the seniors across the country, and all college graduates, they will have lots of people offering lots of advice on moving forward. Although I have no doubt that this advice will be good and sound and helpful, we who are finished with our own graduations know that everyone, ultimately, must make his or her own way in life. We offer our congratulations. We pledge our support. We pray daily for their happiness and fulfillment. Our Lady of Peace, pray for them.
Jim Silcott
