Lynn’s public high schools and St. Mary’s have held their graduations.
Slightly more than 1000 Lynn students will shortly move on to colleges and universities or into the armed forces or into the business community.
This year’s graduates enter a difficult society at a crossroads.
Since the economy nearly collapsed in 2008, everything about life in America seems just a bit more uncertain and harder.
College loans are more difficult to come by and more expensive. Jobs are more plentiful right now than in the past four years but the jobs marketplace is an entirely changed scene.
Parents trying to do what they can for their children going on with their educations are sucked dry of their incomes by the rising cost for tuition and room and board and for this graduating class and for their parents, this isn’t going to change.
Even the military is a changed place for those entering into service.
The great wars are winding down. The military is changing and so too is our foreign policy.
The great advantage that each and every graduate of Lynn Classical High School, Lynn English High School, Lynn Tech High School and St. Mary’s High School is that America remains the one place in this troubling world where young peoples’ minds have been trained to be free – and the democracy we enjoy ensures this disposition.
We like to think that kids graduating from the public schools here and from St. Mary’s have an understanding of the human predicament that they carry with them off to college, into the armed forces or into the business world.
You can’t help but to understand how the world turns when you’ve spent your public or private school life in this city.
There is something very real about going to school in this city. There is no affect, no snobbery, no racism and a multi-cultural mix quite unlike most other school systems of its size in this state.
For the graduates and for their parents, there is a great deal of pride in the achievements of their children.
The weekend was an homage to that and in a two-day period last weekend, there were more touching scenes and heartfelt moments in this city than we could reasonably relate except to say – it was a grand weekend for parents, grandparents, friends and relatives.
It was a weekend of soaring hope and of celebration.
If you are the parent of a graduate, this was a weekend to remember, always.
In a lifetime, all of us get just so many of these type weekends.
Congratulations to the graduates. Congratulations to the parents and congratulations and thank you to the teachers at all the high schools who did so much to make graduation day a reality.