Email
Print
Statesville Christian graduates 28 students
Regan Hill photo
Jessica Wade Boulware and her classmates walk through the doors to their futures last night during a commencement ceremony for Statesville Christian School.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: May 30, 2009
Almost one-fourth of Statesville Christian School's 2009 graduates have been with the class for their entire scholastic careers.
Charles Eller Jr. was one of six students to pick up their high school diplomas Friday evening who have never taken a class outside of a SCS classroom.
"It's been great," said Eller, who entered SCS as kindergartner in the fall of 1996, just a year after the school was founded. "I think our friendship has grown tremendously over the years."
Allie Cline, another of the six, agreed.
"We share memories that the others here don't have," she said.
A total of 28 students were awarded their diplomas Friday during a ceremony in the sanctuary of Western Avenue Baptist Church.
Class valedictorian Haley Paterson said her time at SCS "has been awesome." She said that was particularly true of her senior year.
"It was great," she said. "But I've really worked hard at it."
During her valadictorial address, Paterson quoted from the Bible and instructed her classmates to "be the light of the world."
She asked them, "Will you stand up for your beliefs? Will you be the difference in someone's life? And will you do it all for the glory of the Lord?"
Paterson plans to attend the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the fall and study nursing.
The entire graduating class is committed to begin college this year and all but one student has made up his mind on which instituted of higher learning that will be.
Former SCS athletic director David Schenk delivered the graduation message and it was similar in essence to Paterson's.
His theme was "Christian contentment," which he said could be achieved only through a devotion to Jesus.
"Anything you go after without doing so to honor the Lord," Schenk said, "is meaningless."
Schenk instructed the class to seek a kind of Christian transformation.
"It would be great to be content with all the situations the Lord puts you in," he said. "But it would be even better to live your life in such a way that people who look at you say, 'He has something special.' "
All the students and speakers at the ceremony invoked the school's strong Christian tradition.
But before the start of the ceremony, SethWright — who was identified by some of his classmates as the class clown — offered some rather more secular advice.
Wright attended SCS for only his freshman and senior years. He spent the two years in between in Dubai on the Persian Gulf, where his father worked as a pilot.
He put a lot of emphasis on just staying awake during class hours.
"I would tell the younger students that sleep is good," he said. "But caffeine is better."
Email
Print
