Commencement messages: “Watch out world, here comes the Class of 2024.” Nyle Abdel-Magid and Mariyah Rumpca-Veronese are here in mortar board and tassel snapshot representations from the procession.
Speakers reminisce, also see great promise
WINONA, Minn. – To 197 Winona High School graduates, commencement speaker Hazen Stangl said he was convinced that that one of them, his graduation classmates, would have the next million dollar idea, a cure for world for hunger or a path to world peace. “We are some of the most flexible and adaptable students our planet has ever seen,” Stangl said. The ceremony, 154th in the school’s history, was at Paul Giel Field, the graduates seated on the turf. Another speaker, Ike Erdmanczyk said the high school journey had had ups and downs, the good times and the bad. Also, he chuckled, there were those fierce lunchroom debates. “Even though we have all been progressing through this journey individually, we have collectively been working toward the same goal — inspiring one another without even knowing it.” The new Winona schools superintendent, Brad Berzinski, encouraged the graduates to think of the names and faces of all the teachers who got them to this point, going back to the moment they first walked into kindergarten.