St. Joe's Final High School Class 'Crusaders Forever'
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Sunday's graduation ceremonies for St. Joseph Central High School were both celebratory and sad.
The class of 2017 would be the 115th class to graduate from the Berkshire County's only Catholic high school; it would also be the last.
"We have had enormous challenges this year to remain strong and faithful knowing that our school is closing," Principal Amy Gelinas said during the ceremony in the adjacent St. Joseph's Church. "It is a testament to the community at St. Joseph's High School that we remained together ... during this emotionally challenging year ...
"The excitement of graduating and moving on is tempered with the sadness that other students will not have the same opportunity."
The Diocese of Springfield last October made the decision to close the 120-year-old high school, the last remnant of what had been a thriving parochial school system in Pittsfield. The reasons cited were changing demographics and limited financial resources.
This year, there were only 68 students total in four grades; the class of 2017 numbered just 19, down two-thirds from just four years ago.
On Sunday, the gathering sought to focus on the joy rather than the sadness, although Olivia Bullock in her valedictory address said both are part of the life's experience.
High school speakers in the Berkshires have occassionally strayed from the traditional address, most often using song, or music or poetry to make their point.
Bullock used what appeared to be a blank canvas, using both her hands and brushes to swiftly create an image on one half of the canvas that at first seemed to defy understanding.
"Each splotch of paint represents an experience and each experience is necessary to product the final picture," she said. "Splashes of color begin to appear; some colors are bright and happy, reflecting the wonderful blessings we are given ... other colors are darker and more ominous as we encounter hardships along the path."
Some colors are disheartening, and can appear jumbled and smeared and messy, forcing attempts to correct them.
"There's a little voice in the back of our minds that encourage you to keep trying even though no one else understands the picture you're trying to make," Bullock said.
She flipped the canvas over, which elicited the audience to "oooh" and then break into applause as the visage of St. Teresa of Calcutta, better known as Mother Teresa, was immediately recognizable.
"With this new perspective, we can realize that our once distant future is finally been revealed — the light and dark, the positive and the negative, the good times and the bad, have all been fixed and modeled by an unseen artist's hand," Bullock said. "Sometimes life looks awful but it's not until the very end you can see the whole picture."
She pulled off the covering on the other side of the canvas to reveal the quote by St. Teresa that had formed the theme of her address: "Yesterday is past, tomorrow is not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin."
Bishop Mitchell Rozanski, in his homily, spoke to the poignancy of the occasion and described a pilgrimage tour he took that followed the steps of St. Paul. One stop was at the Church of Mary in Ephesus in Anatolia.
"There was just a field with four pillars," he said. He had been expecting a church but then realized it had been 1,500 years since the Council of Ephesus had met there. But though the structure was gone, "the faith they proclaimed is a faith that goes on and on ...
"We gather here today, certainly bittersweet, over this wonderful graduation ceremony in which you will take another step in life, an important step in life, as you go forth from here and St. Joseph's High School."
The graduates participated in the Mass: Jessie Tobin gave the first reading and Michael Gingris the second reading; Bryce Pettograsso and Stephanie Vargas gave the prayers of the faithful; and Rebekah Baker, Samantha El Saddik and Joseph Rong say several songs and hymns.
Gelinas presented the diplomas and the recessional repaired to the church lawn for the traditional tossing of mortarboards just as the rain began to fall.
Salutatorian Theresa Kirsimagi had described the class as a rocky beach transformed into beautiful polished pebbles by wave after wave over the past four years.
"Like pebbles on the shore, we are always jostling each other, always tumbling and always changing," she said, but the supportive, loving and service-centered values instilled by St. Joe will remain a characteristic of the class.
"The heartbreak that we face this year will prepare us for approaching waves on the rocks — college, the job search, whatever we achieve — focus and appreciate the things that make us happy."
And she added at the last: "Crusaders forever."
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