'Enjoy the ride': Martinsville High School holds graduation ceremony

MARTINSVILLE - Martinsville High School celebrated the graduating class of 2022 on Friday evening.

The ceremony opened with remarks from Martinsville High School principal Eric Bowlen, who congratulated the graduates and took a few moments to give some recognitions.

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First to honor veterans in attendance and those among the graduates who were joining the military. Second for a moment of silence to remember the 19 child victims of this week's mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Finally, a round of applause for all the people that have helped the graduates get to this point.

"Squaring the Circle"

After a performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by the school choir, salutatorian Maggie Coffey took the stage.

Coffey joked that she wanted to open her speech with a quote from her favorite movie. Unfortunately, her favorite movie is a silent film, so that proved impossible.

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Even still, Coffey urged her fellow graduates to take on the impossible or "squaring the circle," as she said. Coffey used a math analogy to explain the phrase. In lay man's terms, she urged the graduates to not get caught up in perfectionism and find work-arounds to the obstacles that come their way.

Coffey ended her speech with a final piece of advice: Follow your dreams.

"Just be happy," Coffey told her fellow graduates. "Do you want to do. Not what society, or friends, or family expect of you."

Building the Future

The microphone was then passed to class president and valedictorian Thatcher Anderson.

Anderson said that he struggled to come up with "the perfect speech." Ultimately, he decided not to try to recycle the same old advice or, as a friend suggested, just discuss the Marvel movie Morbius.

Instead, he talked about LEGO. Anderson likened LEGO bricks to life, saying that there were infinite possibilities of what to make with them and no right or wrong way to connect them, despite the image on the front of the set's box.

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"There can't be a single path to success because success looks different to all of us," Anderson said. "I guess you could say that society tends to glorify the image on the box."

Anderson challenged his fellow graduates to look beyond the instructions, beyond how things are supposed to be, and instead build the future they wanted to see.

"Invent the life you want. And if you have to break a few rules along the way, so be it," Anderson said. "Just keep building."

"Enjoy the Ride"

After Coffey and Anderson concluded, Bowlen returned to the podium to conclude his remarks. Bowlen highlighted the resiliency of this graduating class in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which only allowed them to receive one year of normalcy in their high school experience.

"They have been asked to do things that no other class had been asked to do," Bowlen said. "And you wanna know something? They did it."

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Bowlen also highlighted the story of a student who had contracted a brain tumor. Bowlen urged the graduates to live as that student did and "enjoy the ride."

The ceremony concluded with Anderson returning to the microphone to direct the graduates in the turning of the tassels. A figurative and literal hats off for the class of 2022.

This article originally appeared on The Reporter Times: Class of 2022: Martinsville High School holds graduation