Crawford eagles leave the nest

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

“High School life is swiftly pass­ing, Soon its sands are run; But while we live, we’ll ever cher­ish, Friend­ships here begun.” So goes the final verse of Colonel Crawford’s alma mater, which was sung dur­ing Colonel Craw­ford High School’s grad­u­a­tion com­mence­ment on June 3.

The cer­e­mony was held in the school’s packed gym­na­sium that after­noon. Class vale­dic­to­rian Jor­dan Shell said that he could not have asked for a bet­ter class to grad­u­ate with when he offered his speech. “Con­tinue to work hard and stay true to your word,” he advised before quot­ing Dr. Seuss: “Because ‘those who mind don’t mat­ter, and those who don’t mind mat­ter most.’” Shell was later awarded the Mar­ion E. Alt­house Schol­ar­ship for being the top aca­d­e­mic senior.

The salu­ta­to­rian, Kas­sidy Katona, spoke about the impor­tance of teach­ers as coaches, advi­sors and men­tors and thanked them for being “the back­bone of the school.” She addi­tion­ally com­mented that the class of 2012 could not have got­ten to grad­u­a­tion with­out the help of fam­ily. Katona also earned an Alt­house Schol­ar­ship as the sec­ond top aca­d­e­mic senior.

Class Pres­i­dent Kaylee Rus­sell then shared some of her favorite mem­o­ries dur­ing her time at Colonel Craw­ford. In lieu of a keynote speaker, a pic­ture slideshow was pre­sented. Made by Ahlissa Eich­horn and Krista Horn­ing, it fea­tured pic­tures of the grad­u­ates through­out var­i­ous stages of their lives, from child­hood into the high school years, while music played in the background.

After­ward the senior choir per­formed “Thank You” as well as the alma mater.

Sev­eral awards were pre­sented as well, begin­ning with “employee of the year.” Ele­men­tary teacher Robin Bruner was announced as the win­ner and the audi­ence gave her a stand­ing ova­tion as she approached the stage to accept the enor­mous eagle tro­phy. This was Bruner’s final year of teach­ing, and her hus­band, Super­in­ten­dent Ted Bruner, retired too.

The award for “cit­i­zen of the year” was pre­sented to Craw­ford alum­nus John Reynolds for the time and assis­tance he has pro­vided to the school over the years. “[My wife and I] grad­u­ated here in 1983 but we never left,” he said. Other spe­cial awards included the Nathan Krahling Sci­ence Award, which went to Jor­dan Crase; and the Henry Huber Fam­ily Schol­ar­ship, but two awards were given as a result of a tie. Tori Schimpf and Anne Wit­tib­schlager were the recipients.

After diplo­mas were given, Kyle McClain gave the bene­dic­tion and high school prin­ci­pal Todd Mar­tin pre­sented the class. Grad­u­ates sealed the event with the tra­di­tional toss of their black and gold caps.