New Ulm High School graduates 218 seniors

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Parents, friends and relatives packed Vogel Arena to watch the New Ulm Senior High School class of 2001 walk across the stage and receive its diplomas late Friday night.

Parents applauded, graduates wept quietly and flashbulbs popped as the long purple train filed into the area quietly to the gentle lilt of Edward Elgar's famous "Pomp and Circumstance." In a brief paused between that song and the national anthem, the faces of the graduates lit up with the flashes of several cameras in the bleachers.

District 88 Superintendent Harold Remme opened the ceremony with a set of remarks. Remme said that "a graduation is the culmination of education activities."

"This is a product of your own hard work, " he told the 218 purple-and-white-clad seniors. "And past educational planning....The final grad standard test awaits you as you exit here tonight. Go forward and pass the test with flying colors."

Lana Howk gave the 2001 senior class commencement address after Remme finished his remarks. Among her many benedictions and encouragements was a quote from William Arthur Ward.

"If you can imagine, you can create it. If you can dream it, you can be it," Howk told her classmates. Her classmates, in turn, responded with a standing ovation after Howk finished.

School board chairperson Susan Ullery told graduates that they "look cute in caps and gowns, so ready to step out into the future. Cherish this moment...because it might be the last time you fill an area with supportive people."

Ullery said there are " no grad packages in life. The tests and projects in life are harder because there is no grade, so you don't know how you're doing."

Ullery quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson when she said, "What lies before and behind is tiny matter in comparison with what's within us."

The evening wasn't without pause, however. Michael Neveln gave a special acknowledgement to his mother, who passed away during the school year.

And then, once New Ulm Senior High School Principal David Lapatka introduced the class of 2001, the stage at graduation was as it always is at graduation time -- awash in a sea of purple and white, with several young men and women walking in high school students and leaving with the rest of their lives ahead of them.