Wilson Creek comes out to celebrate graduates

Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald The Wilson Creek School class of 2017 (R-L): Salutatorian Tyle Bise, Valedictorian Chance Garrett, Jessica Gray, Samuel Hochstatter, Colby Miller, Rheanna Skidmore, and Colton Minoletti.

by Charles H. Featherstone Staff Writer
| June 5, 2017 3:00 AM

WILSON CREEK — It looked like the whole town of some 200-odd souls was gathered in the school auditorium on Saturday morning to celebration the graduation of the class of 2017.

All seven of them.

“These are my brothers and sisters,” said salutatorian Tyler Bise, not only of the six other young people sharing the stage with him, but of the entire Wilson Creek community as well.

Joining Bise on the stage Saturday morning were valedictorian Chance Garrett, Jessica Gray, Samuel Hochstatter, Colby Miller, Rhianna Skidmore, and Colton Minoletti — the entire Wilson Creek School class of 2017.

They are close — most of these graduates have been together since kindergarten, and the ceremony featured a slide show of each student from when they were babies to their graduation photos.

“We were not just a part of school, but a visible part of the community,” Garrett said in his graduation speech. “Always remember where you are from, and where you are going.”

Jackie Floetke, who teaches business and career-related courses at the Wilson Creek School, told students they won’t stop learning or going to school once they have moved their tassels from left to right and walk out the doors of Wilson Creek School into the wider world.

“We don’t stop going to school when we graduate,” she said. “I didn’t, and you won’t either.”

Some kind of advanced education is necessary in our day an age, she said, whether it is college, some kind of shorter technical education, or an apprenticeship.

However, many of the most important lessons learned were taught by family, Floetke said, and are taught by hard experience.

“Think of the first time you were told, ‘Don’t touch.’ Did you touch? Did it hurt? Did you learn anything?” Floetke said.

Lessons await — from that first auto accident not handled by Mom and Dad, or in those first bills that come due, or in the first time difficult choices loom with nothing but natural consequences.

“Skipping school and skipping work are two different things,” she said.

Life is unfair, Floetke explained, and often times you find others will get things you should. That is the way of things. Work hard anyway, she said, and let that hard work speak for itself.

And be open to the world and what it has to teach you, she added.

“Sometimes, when you least expect it, you will learn something,” Floetke said. “Your future children will be some of your best teachers. I know you have been some of mine.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.