By Mary O’KEEFE

On Wednesday, June 5, commencement and promotion ceremonies were held throughout the Glendale Unified School District (GUSD).

Across GUSD a total of 1,799 seniors graduated from the high schools Crescenta Valley, Clark Magnet, Glendale, Hoover, Daily and Verdugo Academy. Crescenta Valley boasted 596 graduates; there were 508 at Glendale, 347 at Hoover, 277 at Clark, 52 at Daily and 19 at Verdugo Academy.

Before she took on the role of principal at Crescenta Valley High School in 2021, Christine Benitez had a vision of a falcon flying over the Crescenta Valley High School commencement ceremony. After all, the falcon is the high school’s mascot and students are reminded that “Once a Falcon Always a Falcon.” And like last year, a falcon did fly overhead to the oohs and aahs of the students and audience.

Senior Eric Eubank shared with his fellow classmates his thoughts titled “Strive for Failure.”

“If you’d ask me at the beginning of high school what I thought about giving my speech in front of my entire graduating class, I would have laughed,” Eubank said.

He added in years past he was “painfully shy” but was proud of the fact that he had grown into a person who could speak on the stage.

“And if there’s one thing that I think defines the Class of 2024, its just that – growth,” he said.

Eubank said his classmates started their high school career in “our bedrooms with our only company being the Zoom logo.”

“I think it’s safe to say that we have all far surpassed who we were then,” Eubank said. He added that all students have their own story but there is one thing that unites them … and adults.

“That thing is failure. In all of the growth that we’ve had in the past 12 years, I think we can all attribute, at least a little bit of it, to all of the ways in which each and every one of us has failed,” Eubank said.

He said at the time failure was painful; however, strength came from it with support from the “teacher who told you to try just one more time, that coach who took a shot on you, that friend who stepped by your side not matter how ugly it got. It’s through failure that we formed these valuable connections and learn lessons far more valuable that any success could ever teach us.”

“I want all of us to continue to be willing to swing big, try our best and strive for failure because it’s the trials and tribulations that we face that mold us into who we’re meant to become,” Eubank said.

The second speech came from graduating senior Jack Zachrison who shared, “Footnotes and Other Clichés.”

He explained when school staff asked students to write a speech they did not give a lot of instruction “outside of one simple thing.”

“Avoid clichés,” he said.

He introduced himself to those students who did not know him and described himself as someone who does not often “love doing what I’m told,” adding his speech will be full of clichés … and a footnote.

“Albert Einstein once said, ‘To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.’ Now I have no idea what that means but I do know that if you Google Albert Einstein and scroll through his Wikipedia page you will be hard pressed to find the name of his high school,” he said.

He added it made sense since Einstein had so many achievements that his earlier academics became a footnote to history. He then asked, “Why celebrate commencement if it will only be a footnote?”

“It was a footnote that he attended elementary school in Munich and learned sharing and reading just like everyone else. Also in that footnote, he taught himself differential calculus – not quite so much like everyone else. In that footnote he made friends, he even met his wife. The footnote that we gloss over made him who he was.

“I guess what I mean to say is that this footnote is really a lot more than a footnote: it’s us. It’s the stuff that has made us who we are. It’s your parents dropping you off on the first day of kindergarten and it’s that time you fell off your bike. It’s lazy times spent avoiding your English homework and happy times spent with your best friend. It’s parallel parking and laughing and crying and that teacher who wouldn’t give up on you … and it’s learning,” he said, “learning who you are.”

Photos by Rachelle MILLER and Charly SHELTON