After an historically distorted and painful year, a little drizzle wouldn’t stop the seniors of Freedom HS from finally enjoying a rare evening together in the BASD Stadium June 11 to observe their hard-won graduation.

They sat on distanced folding chairs on a dismal gray evening, but given the challenges and setbacks suffered during the pandemic, the students have become masters of making the best of a bad situation, and thus chose a hopeful theme for their event: Spinning straw into gold.

Retiring Principal Mike LaPorta welcomed the gathered Freedom community with levity and enthusiasm. Saying farewell to departing faculty, he said, “Best of luck to Donald King and Michael LaPorta… very awkward.

“I feel it fitting to tailor my remarks to the class of 2021 to wish-fulfillment. Recently I read an article by influencer Jim Paluch about creating a wish list and taking actions to ensure that the most important items on this list were accomplished. If you think about it, the correlation can be made that infant wishes are the straw before it becomes your gold.”

LaPorta listed Paluch’s suggestions because he’s found similar successes. “Write your wishes as a goal and set a date to it. Identify what groups of people you need to get you to achieve your goals. Determine what information you need to assist you with goal attainment. Identify any obstacles that can get in your way. And map out a plan. While working your plan, you need to eat, sleep and drink your goal and readjust when necessary, becoming a goal-setting machine. This strategy will enable you to turn your dreams into wishes, turn your wishes into goals and turn your goals into actions, ultimately making your dreams and goals come true.

“That is spinning your straw into gold. My gold has been being your principal and the principal of this great high school for the last 14 years. It has been truly an honor and a privilege.”

Student Council President Mridula Kanakavelan said, “Today we gather at the end of a long and irregular journey. Up until this moment we have walked together, but once we move that tassel our roads will have diverged. On a fateful morning of August 2008, we all became a part of each other’s futures, and now we can all say that we have become each other’s past.”

Kanakavelan described years of anticipation for the singular events that awaited in senior year, but, “expectations definitely didn’t factor in a global pandemic, but rolling with the punches seems to be a trend that 2021 graduates have gotten used to. As non-traditional as this entire year was, we did what we do best: Take what was given and make it better. Weave the straw into gold.”

Valedictorian Belina Yeung said, “Graduates, we’re in the endgame now. As a final goodbye I decided to write this speech in a manner that represents my high school experience: So write it the day it was due.”

She said, “We’re here tonight to celebrate. To take pride in how far we’ve come through all our efforts, hard work and resilience, not only in an academic sense, but also in a social sense. Although we’ve all felt the pressures of school, from the never-ending cycle of stress and procrastination, some of the most important lessons we will ever learn in life do not come from a school syllabus.

“Our true high school experience will never be about our grades,” Yeung said. “The true high school experience is each other – the relationships we have built with other students and teachers and the passions we have begun to cultivate. We never learned compassion from a textbook, but it was taught by everyone here tonight.

“This year was not easy, but we took every challenge, every setback, and spun it into gold. We took our straw – our canceled Homecoming dance, Liberty/Freedom game, and hangouts with friends – and turned it into something more than just accepting our circumstances. We turned straw into gold: A prom that was outdoors; a miniTHON that raised over $30,000; and this graduation, with all our faculty, guests and graduates,” Yeung said.

“We never made losing an option.”