Celebrating Box Elder spirit

If a year from now you are in need of a healthy dose of inspiration, drop into commencement ceremonies at Box Elder High School.

This is a great time of the year for those of us in the news business. We get to cover graduation ceremonies at school along the Hi-Line. We get to see graduates as they celebrate their success and begin the first step in the rest of their lives. Each service is unique, telling the story of the graduates and the community they come from.

But there is something special about Box Elder.

I have an advantage. Being the boss, I assign who covers what graduation, and I always manage to assign myself to Box Elder.

If you’re in a hurry, don’t go to Box Elder’s graduation. If you get out in two-and-a-half hours you’re lucky, It’s a combination graduation and celebration of community life. And there is a lot to celebrate in Box Elder.

Often you see four generations sitting together in the bleachers observing the ceremonies. Sometimes the youngest generation is not as interested in the proceedings as the older three. In 15 years, maybe, they will be on the stage at the front, but for now enthusiasm wanes as the hours pass by.

The sense of commotion adds to the sense that you are part of a real community festival.

Life has not been a bowl of cherries for many of the graduates at Box Elder.

Located just off the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, many students at the school have been the victims of bias. Many come from poor family situations. There aren’t very many rich people on the reservation.

But as I sat in the bleachers at commencement on Saturday, I couldn’t help but think of what they do have.

First there is an unbelievable sense of resilience among the students and residents there. Most have picked themselves up time and again and kept on going. Usually they have a smile on their face as they do.

There is a sense of hope and some of the greatest humor you will want to see and hear.

There is a sense of community. Students have a support system that stretches into extended family and friends and binds together the Native community.

All of this was obvious during the valedictory address by Brandon The Boy, whose story of resilience and bouncing back should be an inspiration to everyone.

I wasn’t the only one thinking about the resilience, the bouncing back, the humor and the community ties during Saturday’s services.

First-year Box Elder School Superintendent Thomas Peck was thinking the same thing, Peck told the crowd that he was devastated earlier this year when his older sister died suddenly after a basketball game in Columbia Falls.

She, like his three other sisters and his parents, were teachers, he said. He followed in their footsteps.

The Box Elder attitude and community spirit helped him get through the tough times, he said.

He made his comments as he awarded a $500 scholarship he has established in his sister’s name to Alyssa LaMere, who plans to become a teacher.

He got through the terrible experience because the Box Elder community was “so, so compassionate,” he said.

Compassion, humor and resilience is a trait of “the Box Elder community, Rocky Boy’s reservation, the Chippewa Cree Tribe and Native Americans.”

“I can’t tell you how many belly laughs I have every day at work,” he said.

He said his sister was resilient, and that’s what he appreciates about Box Elder.

”This community and these kids are the most resilient people I know,” he said.

Peck gets the feeling every day by going to school that I get going to graduation once a year.

Box Elder is a pretty special place.

(John Kelleher is managing editor of the Havre Daily News. He can be reached at 406-265-6795, ext. 17, 406-390-0798 or [email protected].)