Ephrata graduates told 'life is a choir'
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Three graduating seniors blow glitter at the audience during the Ephrata High School graduation ceremony on Friday.
EPHRATA — “Do you know who you are behind the uniforms, the grades and the costumes?”
That was the question graduating senior Alec Lobe asked himself, his fellow students — and probably everyone else gathered in Ephrata’s Kiwanis football field on Friday for graduation ceremony of Ephrata High School’s class of 2017.
Lobe was one of 166 seniors who graduated this year, and he wanted to remind his fellow graduates that the lives in front of them would be unpredictable and that much of the growing and learning they will do will be the result of “lots and lots and lots of pain.”
“It’s your life. How will you live it?” Lobe asked.
He drew from his own experience in high school of learning to sing in the choir. He was used to singing solo, and it took him a long time to learn to find his “choir voice,” a struggle of singing first too loud and then not signing loud enough before he figured out how to blend in and contribute to the sound of the whole.
“Life is not a solo. It is a choir,” Lobe said. “By focusing on the group, I became a stronger individual. Listen to those around you. Learn, grow, and give back.”
Jeff Allsop, a former Air Force pilot and the Gear Up advisor at Ephrata High School, turned his back to the audience to address the students directly, and told the graduates to be friendly, trust in the good intentions of the people they meet, take responsibility for their bad decisions, apologize, and even take a few risks in life.
“Twenty seconds of insane courage, something good will come of it,” he said.
Gear Up — which stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs — is a federally funded program designed to help low-income students prepare for schooling after they graduate from high school.
And while some students received more applause than others as they crossed the field to get their diplomas, no one got as much as applause as Jayda Harmon, who has been battling osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, as she was handed her sheepskin and then received a flower from a group of junior class officers.
“I’m so glad this day has come,” Harmon said after the ceremony.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.