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Veterans' ceremony was inspirational
It was a different kind of graduation ceremony we attended last Thursday – Veterans Day – at Southwestern Community College. Instead of parents, grandparents and great-grandparents proudly watching a teenager collect a diploma, we had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren watching their family patriarchs march to Pomp and Circumstance.
I guess that's what happens when a high school graduation gets postponed for some six decades because the participants decided it was more important to help win World War II than to hang around Cullowhee, Webster and Sylva high schools.
Superintendent Sue Nations brought the graduates greetings from former Superintendent Paul Buchanan, who was principal at Webster High when several of the veteran graduates were students there.
"He's so proud of you and all you've accomplished," Nations said of 90-year-old Buchanan, whose health kept him from attending the ceremony.
Nations then expressed her own appreciation to the honorees.
"Yours is the generation who answered the call the save the world from the two most ruthless and powerful military machines ever assembled," Nations told the 13 graduates who were able to attend last week's commencement. "Yours is the generation whose duty and courage gave us the world we have today. You put aside your education and set aside your dreams ... thank you for all you've done for us and for our country."
As keynote speaker and U.S. Air Force veteran (and Jackson County Commissioners' Chairman) Stacy Buchanan said, this group didn't learn history in school, they made history with epic battles fought around the globe.
Quoting a poem, Buchanan addressed the assembled veterans:
"It was the veteran, not the reporter, who gave us free speech; it was the veteran, not the protester, who gave us the right to demonstrate," he said. "If young people have no heroes, they're looking in the wrong place – they should be looking right here at this group to my left. They may not be rich or famous, but they're our heroes – they're Jackson County heroes," Buchanan said.
The evening was filled with patriotic music, from David Ginn's opening trumpet medley of armed service themes including Anchors Aweigh, the Marines Hymn and When the Caissons Go Rolling Along, to Dana Tucker and the Fairview first-graders' enthusiastic performance of God Bless the USA.
Smoky Mountain High School's band and choirs presented an arresting rendition of Battle Hymn of the Republic, featuring soloist Martha Savage, and SMHS student Tonya Pruett delivered a flawless national anthem. Teachers Joshua Walls of Blue Ridge and Terri Hollifield of the Central Office added America the Beautiful and the Statue of Liberty to round out the evening's stirring melodic offerings.
The only thing the least bit "typical" about Thursday's commencement that I can think of were the tears of pride and joy in the eyes of family members as they watched their graduate shake hands with Nations before receiving that long-awaited diploma.
What made it extra-special was that the emotional responses weren't limited to the graduates' families. Most of us got teary-eyed as we watched our veterans walk forward proudly to lay claim to what they had given up so many years before.
It was an honor to be in the audience.
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