by Elizabeth Connolly
Hometown Weekly Reporter
On a spectacularly beautiful early June Sunday, the 150th 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 same class that began their high school experience during a worldwide pandemic.
The ceremony was a wonderful 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 Faith Heffernan and Class President Kevin Needham.
“Walpole has been our home, maybe for only a year or our whole lives, and has shaped us…it has made us who we are today,” Needham said. “As we move on through our next journeys, in college, in the military, on the job site, or even traveling the globe, class of 2024: I urge each one of you to take with you the lessons and ideas you learned from your time at Walpole High and to never forget your roots. For this community has helped create the person you are today.”
“I would like ask my classmates to look up into the stands,” Heffernan requested. “Whether or not you can actually find your family and friends that are here for you today, let’s take a moment to think about everything our loved one’s have contributed to our many years of education. While high school can be challenging for us, it can be challenging for our families, too. So, on behalf of everyone sitting down here, I’d like to thank everybody sitting up there.”
This year, in celebration of Walpole’s 300th anniversary, the Walpole Scholarship Foundation awarded 151 Walpole students a total of $300,000 in scholarships. 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 2024!
