RMHS Graduation 2024
Hello everyone. It’s an honor to be standing in front of you today as we close out the last four years. To start, I’d just like to thank all of the teachers, faculty, family and friends who have supported us throughout high school, and of course the band and chorus for being here today to send us off. Today is a day for celebration, but it comes with sadness as well. I’d like to take a moment to remember Theo Freedman, who sadly passed away at the beginning of our junior year.
I was never super close with Theo, but we grew up together. In second grade we were in the same class and I remember we sat next to each other for a few months. One day I remember him waving his pencil to make it seem like it was bending. He tried to teach me how to do it, but to this day, I still haven’t figured out how. This is one of those random memories that has stuck with me ten years later, for whatever reason, and I’m so glad I have this memory of Theo. He was a part of my childhood all throughout elementary school, and I want to be able to remember him. It makes me smile to think of those two seven-year-olds sitting together everyday and finding little things to talk about.
I think it’s important to remember Theo when I can. In some small ways, like with the pencil, he helped make me who I am, and I helped make him who he was. Those small moments matter, and I hope we all can find something to remember about him, whether he was one of your closest friends, whether you knew him since elementary school like me, or whether you just passed him in the hallway a few times. However well you knew him, he was still a part of all our lives here.
After we leave here today, we’re done with high school. This is it. We may never see each other again. But, I hope we can take time in the future to think back and remember our time together. Like my memory with Theo, it can be any small memory that makes you smile or reminds you of who was a part of our lives here. That includes our close friends, and our teachers and coaches who helped us get where we are today, but that also includes the person that you passed in the hallway every day or the person you sat across from in a class but never really had a conversation with. We’ve all affected each other’s lives here, and we all deserve to be remembered in small ways by our peers. We’ve grown up together, and that’s important.
When I was little, my whole world was Wood End Elementary School in Reading, Massachusetts. That’s where I went to school, that’s where my friends were, and that’s where I spent every afternoon after school seeing how high I could swing on the swings. Like many of you, I’ve been in Reading Public Schools since kindergarten, but after today that changes. We’re all going off to do amazing things in the future, whether that’s college or the military or the workforce. My world is no longer just our school or our town, and I’m excited to experience as many new things as I can in the future. I just hope to remember where I came from and who I grew up with, and I hope you will remember me. I wish you all luck in the future, and I’m excited to hear about everything everyone will accomplish. Class of 2024, thank you for growing up with me.
