by Elizabeth Connolly
Hometown Weekly Reporter
On a cool, partly cloudy - but not rainy, a huge plus this particular spring - Sunday, June 1, the 151st Walpole High School (WHS) commencement ceremony took place on the grounds of the Common Street school. Hundreds converged upon Turco Field to celebrate this year’s graduating class.
The ceremony was a marvelous tribute to the graduating class and included music from the WHS concert band, a performance by the WHS concert choir, an impressive list of scholarship and award recipients, and heartfelt student speeches by Cole Bowden and Nirjara Akkole.
“Day by day, your experiences at WHS have made you more knowledgeable, more compassionate, more driven, and that personal growth is more important than any championship trophy…Since you were a little kindergartner, hundreds of people have been in your corner: friends, family, parents, teachers. They’ve all helped you develop countless gifts over the years. Now that you’re graduating, use those gifts. Have fun, do your best, and be unapologetically you. You’re ready, and the world is yours,” Bowden told his classmates.
“Labels are easy,” Akkole mused during her speech. “They’re sticky, convenient, and often wildly inaccurate. But today, as we zip up these graduation gowns, it’s worth asking: were we living, or just checking boxes? Were we becoming ourselves, or just trying to match the tag that someone else stitched onto us? For these past four years, we’ve introduced ourselves by what we do…but what about who we are when the uniform comes off? When the instrument is put away, and when the curtain falls?What about the quiet strength it took to get out of bed when everything felt too heavy? What about the resilience it took to fail a test, lose a friend, or feel completely lost, and still show up the very next day? We are more than our activities, more than the achievements that look good on paper, and the roles we thought we had to play. We are dynamic, kind, compassionate young people ready to take on the world.”
The Walpole Scholarship Foundation, which is run by an all-volunteer Board of Trustees, awarded 109 Walpole students a total of $250,000 in scholarships in 2025. Many of the recipients were in this year’s WHS graduating class.
After the diplomas were awarded, the traditional cap-throwing took place, as family and friends proudly looked on.
Congratulations to the Class of 2025!
