Closing out a spring term that none of them could have anticipated, the 127 graduates of the Perry High School Class of 2024 received diplomas in commencement exercises Sunday afternoon in the PHS gymnasium.
Students processed into the room to the strains of Sir Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” played by Jenn Nelson and Olivia Christensen.
Standing beside a memorial suit coat of longtime PHS Principal Dan Marburger, who presided over PHS commencement ceremonies for many years and was slain at the school in January, a tearful PHS Associate Principal Brad Snowgren first greeted the graduates and welcomed them to the newly named Dan Marburger Court in the gymnasium, designated in his honor.
The graduates were then edified by addresses from Perry Community School District Superintendent of Schools Clark Wicks, Bluejay Congress President Callie Steva and Senior Class President Kaitlyn Leber.
Forty-four students graduating with honors were recognized by Snowgren and Perry Community School District Board of Directors President Linda Andorf.
Diplomas were presented to the graduates by Wicks, Andorf and PCSD School Board Director Joe Tuhn.
The Perry High School Concert Choir, directed by Nelson, sang Ysaye M. Barnwell’s “Wanting Memories.”
Family, friends and well wishers repeatedly erupted in cheers for the graduating seniors, who aptly embody the quotation in the high school foyer that stands like an epigraph to the seniors’ story: “The public school is the greatest institution for the encouragement of real democracy existing. Its policy is to place all people on an equal basis.”
