Havre High celebrates graduates

An upbeat crowd celebrated 113 graduating seniors in a packed Havre High School gymnasium Sunday afternoon.

The crowd occasionally screamed, roared, whistled and someone may have even blown what sounded like a very loud kazoo. The hour-long celebration had light-hearted and serious moments.

When Heather Lizotte was called to accept her diploma, someone in the bleacher seating, perhaps her boyfriend, proclaimed, "That's my girlfriend!"

The last person to receive his diploma, Mitchell Woods, elicited a similarly loud, but slightly different, declaration of, "That's my best friend!"

The Havre High School Symphonic Band, directed by departing music teacher David Johnke, played the national anthem at the beginning of the ceremony. The band followed that with the upbeat school song, "Illinois Loyalty," causing most people in the gymnasium to clap in rhythm.

Superintendent Andy Carlson told the graduates that the day was about them, but also advised them to thank those who helped them get this far in the days ahead.

Carlson then introduced the keynote speaker, retiring math teacher of 37 years Mary Wagner, as a shining example of Havre Public Schools' teaching excellence. The crowd erupted when he called out Wagner's name.

Wagner told the 2016 graduating class that they are the type of students that make a teacher want to teach forever. She said the class of 2016 is talented in every way. To top it all off, she added, "You're really just a bunch of nice, decent, young adults."

The microphone cut off as Wagner was talking. There was some movement as a solution was being figured out, and after about a minute, Wagner was given a microphone that worked.

"I actually feared this was going to happen," she said.

Since it will probably be the last time she'll have a microphone and a captive audience, Wagner said she was going to use the moment to teach one final lesson. She called the lesson "Wagner's ABCs to a Happy and Fulfilling Life." A quiet instrumental version of "What a Wonderful Life" began to play in the background.

Among the letters, Wagner said A is for keeping a positive attitude. B is about being a good friend. E was advice to "eat anything you want; the good, the bad and the ugly - moderation is the key," she said.

F stood for following great leaders and then becoming one. She told students how to figure out if they were leaders or followers. All the graduates were told to grab the hands of those next to them. Whoever had their hands on top was a leader and those whose hands were under were followers. If they had one hand under and one over, she didn't know what they were, Wagner said, laughing.

When she got to H, Wagner made her 85-year-old mother, who was in the bleachers, stand up. She praised her mother as the hardest working person in that room. The letter I was an opportunity to teach the importance of ironing.

"Iron your clothes," she said. "The difference between looking really nice and just OK is an iron."

L was for loving and forgiving others. N was instruction to "never, ever give up." Q gave Wagner a chance to tell the students to quit bad habits and replace them with good ones. She told a story about when she tried to take up smoking because her then future husband was doing it and she thought it was cool. But she said she wasn't any good at it - she didn't know how to inhale. It was a bad habit she never picked up.

R was for regret.

"Don't leave this world with regret," she said.

Wagner said that advice was something her father repeated often, even on his deathbed.

T was about taking time to appreciate. X was instruction for students to examine themselves - she acknowledged that "examine" didn't start with X. And Z stood for "zoom in on God's purpose for your life."

"Remember," she called out before stepping off the podium, "you can still call the math line."

She was referring to a math help line, her home phone number, that anyone who needs help with math can call.

The graduates' names were called out in alphabetical order, and one by one, the boys in Blue Pony blue and the girls in white gowns, they accepted their diplomas and walked off the platform.

The students were congratulated once more and they all threw their caps in the air.

Seven students graduated with a 4.0 grade point average. Kailee Collins, Savanna Pierson, Logan Pleninger, Keefer Sands, Dane Warp, Brandon Williams and Mitchell Woods earned all A's for all four years of high school. Twenty-nine students received scholarships, most of them multiple scholarships.