The Bangor High School class of 2023 spent half of the past four years behind a mask, in front of a zoom screen, socially distancing and applying hand sanitizer.
Whether the 248 students who received their diplomas Sunday at the Cross Insurance Center liked that characterization or not, the coronavirus pandemic characterized their high school careers but it also made them “resilient.”
“Freshman year, we got a glimpse of what high school was supposed to be like,” Class President Taylor Coombs said in her speech to the graduating class and their families. “And then, overnight, we were propelled into the unknown. Sophomore year brought about a whirlwind of change. Living in a constant state of fear and stress was surely one the most difficult situations many of us have ever experienced, parents and teachers included.”
The class of 2023 were greeted with cheers, tears and catcalls as they marched onto the arena floor to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.”
Coombs, 18, of Bangor said that life began to return to normal during their junior year but that they would be seniors before that feeling took hold.
“If there is one word that could describe us as a class, it would be resilient,” she said. “Just take a minute to look around at the people sitting next to you. We are here with no masks on, fully connected with each other. We made it.”
Coombs, the daughter of Danielle Ahern of Bangor and Steve Coombs of Hermon, will attend Villanova University in Pennsylvania this fall on an ROTC scholarship, she said before the ceremony began.
Valedictorian Cuthbert “Cuddy” Steadman, 16, of Bangor agreed that the pandemic was a big part of his and classmates’ high school experience. Due to his own health issues, Cuddy did not return to in-person classes until his junior year.
“When we went back, I think we learned a lot about reintegrating into the broader world,” he said Saturday. “We had to learn how to make friends again and to understand others’ experiences. But we came through it better than we had been before.”
Cuddy’s father, Eric Steadman, teaches math at the high school. His mother, the Rev. Rita Steadman, is the former rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church. Cuddy will attend Brown University in Providence this fall.
Cuddy, who skipped second grade and will be 17 this summer, was named valedictorian due to his high grade point average that included not just his high school class grades but grades from advanced placement classes and college courses.
The salutatorian, Beckett Mundell-Wood, 18, of Bangor, who is the son of Bangor School Committee member Clare Mundell and William Wood of Bangor, will attend Pomona College in Claremont, California.
In her address, Coombs said that the trials students faced because of the pandemic has helped prepare graduates to deal with whatever the future may throw at them.
“But it is because of these challenges that we are now more prepared to adapt to the ever-changing world we live in,” Coombs told her classmates. “Benjamin Disraeli said [it] perfectly when he said ‘There is no education like adversity.’”
Disraeli was a prime minister of the United Kingdom in the 19th century.