If you went for a walk in our neighborhood yesterday and didn’t know about our community, you might have thought some Halloween was happening in the springtime. Several houses in our subdivision are decorated with orange and black balloons. However, if you looked closer, you’d discover that among the balloons are banners wishing high school graduates congratulations and good luck. The school colors of Blaine High School are orange and black, and yesterday was high school graduation.

This is graduation weekend in our county. Our county has 13 high schools, and graduation ceremonies began on Thursday and continue through today. In addition to Blaine, where we live, Ferndale, where our son and his family live, Lynden, and Nooksack schools had graduations yesterday. Today, the three high schools in Bellingham hold their ceremonies.

There was a time when we would have several high school graduation announcements on our refrigerator with invitations to parties honoring graduates. Some weekends during our active careers, we would go from party to party, spending a few minutes at each to offer our congratulations and leave a card before heading off to the next one. Our lives are less hectic now that we have retired. We still receive several announcements, but some of them are from Rapid City. We have only one graduation party to attend this year. We’ll probably linger and visit with the family more than when we had more parties to attend.

We’re in for a different round of graduations in the future. Our oldest grandchild enters high school this fall. The high schools here are four-year schools so that he will be a member of the class of 2029. After him, we have four more grandchildren. The youngest is not yet in school, so we’ll attend graduation ceremonies and parties for over a dozen years.

I didn’t graduate from high school. I began college in an early admissions program that allowed students to enter after they had completed their junior year. Several years later, I was listed on my high school records as a high school dropout. After graduating as valedictorian of my college class and earning my doctorate before age 25, I was told that my status at my high school had been changed to transfer student. I never checked. My high school status never seemed to come up in my further education. When I enrolled in a degree program at the University of Wyoming as an adult, I had to petition to avoid having to retake the Graduate Record Exam. They never asked me about my high school graduation. It never came up in any job interviews during my career, either.

I have attended only one high school reunion. It was an all-school reunion, and I spent more time with my sister’s age group than my own. I know several members of what would have been my graduating class, and I’ve kept up with a few of them on Facebook, but I haven’t been attracted to any of the events, which have become regular since we passed 50 years after graduation. The small group that gathers each year seems to have a good time, and their activities are subdued. I might enjoy catching up with old friends, but I’m not much of a reunion kind of person. This spring, I received an email asking whether I wanted to remain on the list and noted that I had not purchased a reunion mug or T-shirt. I do not need more mugs or T-shirts, but I opted to stay on the email list.

When I write graduation cards for those completing their high school education, this presents a dilemma. I want to be honest and sincere. I can’t use some of the phrases that I suspect others might write. I don’t want to name their high school years as “the best of their lives.” High school wasn’t the best years of my life, and I hope that today’s graduates find more meaning, success, and goodness in the years to come. I want to offer congratulations. They have accomplished significant work, and high school graduation is a milestone. What I like best about talking with high school graduates is asking about what comes next for them.

The graduate attending our party today plans to attend Colorado School of Mines in the fall. He has a scholarship for running, and he is interested in engineering. I have a tiny connection to that college. When we lived in Rapid City, I was a friend of a friend of the School of Mines Football coach and led team devotions for them a couple of times. In 2019, when my wife was in the hospital, I received a card signed by every member of the football team, which was touching at the time. I didn’t know them all that well, but somehow we had connected through the devotions I had offered.

A college professor friend of mine published a book in 2019 titled “What’s the Point of College: Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform.” It is an essential book when colleges and universities are under attack by the current administration. Those attacks seem aimed at destruction rather than reform. Written before this year’s inauguration, my friend’s book looks at public education policy and underlying ethical considerations. He makes a strong case for ensuring that America’s colleges remain places for intellectual inquiry and serious reflection. It is an integral part of the broader conversation our society needs to continue as we seek to repair the damage done by contemporary attacks on higher education.

Amidst all this turmoil, brilliant and promising students are completing their high school careers and considering college education. I see enormous promise in these students, but fear for their futures. Education is not a priority for policymakers in
Washington, DC. These students are worthy of our support. Rather than heading to reunions and reflecting on my past, I hope to continue to find the energy to invest in the current generation of students and encourage them to pursue their educations beyond high school.