Thirteen prayers in the air.
That’s how it was in the gym of Trinity Christian School on Friday evening.
That’s how it was when the 13 members of Trinity’s Class of 2021 flung their caps as high and far as they could, at the conclusion of their commencement exercises on the foggy, rainy night.
All got pretty good loft, considering the not-so-aerodynamic properties of the mortarboards – being sent up in just such an enclosed place, as they were.
Which was probably also a pandemic metaphor for the class known for achievements both in academics and athletics, in a senior year forever clouded by COVID-19.
That’s because the class still managed to pull off what two decades’ worth of previous graduates did during their time when there wasn’t a pandemic on.
They nailed scholarships: To date, a total of $141,000, school officials said.
Even with a world in quarantine, they still amassed lots of community service hours.
And they zipped through the proceedings with (facemask) smiles – and no matter if the second half of their junior year could have only happened via Zoom.
Trevor Cooke, Trinity’s senior class president, turned the experience into rueful tale of both woe, and survival, for comic effect.
It could have even served as a pandemic blues song, in fact, for the senior who will major in music production at WVU this fall.
“Here I am: Battered, bruised and imperfect. But alive and still kicking. Congratulations, everyone. We did it.”
Keynote speaker Wanda Franz, the WVU professor emerita who was president of the National Right to Life Committee from 1991-2011, told the graduates to keep an open ear and open heart where God is concerned.
You know, she said: Since divine plans don’t always go with what you think your plans are.
The pandemic had a way of changing lots of plans, said valedictorian Jaclyn Smith, who enters Penn State this fall as a forensic science major.
Even so, she said, her Trinity family couldn’t have worked harder to make things ‘normal’ – in times that were anything but.
And social distancing required by pandemic protocol, she said, didn’t apply to matters of the heart, where her fellow seniors were concerned.
During her remarks, she turned from the podium to cast her gaze on the other sojourners on the stage.
They were easy to list.
Besides her and Cooke, they are: Isaiah Anderson, Calvin Blunt Jr., Justin Braun, Isaac Cook, Ryan Cummins and Taylie Dulin.
And, Kyler Grimes, Kevin Kelley, Grant Maxwell, Jonathan Sinclair and Robert Steptoe IV.
“I can say I’m truly blessed to have gotten to know you.”
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