“This is my son’s step into adulthood, and it makes me realize that he’s not a baby anymore,” said Beverly Felix, whose son Juan received his diploma.
More than 39 of the graduates finished their high school career with a grade-point average of 4.0 or above, 15 or more scored 800 on one section of the SAT, 140 worked more than 100 community service hours, 95 were Presidential Award winners and one was named a National Merit Scholar, Principal Bruce Osgood said.
Graduate Christy Timmons said she plans to return to the Burbank High campus.
“I want to go to college and major in English and minor in theater so I can come back to Burbank High,” said Timmons, who plans to attend community college and then transfer to a local university.
Osgood used his speech as an opportunity to congratulate the graduates and commemorate the anniversary of D-Day.
“One of the soldiers that fought in D-Day said, ‘You can never have enough training,’” Osgood said.
“Now, we’ve given you your training and today is your D-Day. . . . Your training will help you but your heart, or your deepest self, will get you through.”
But the night was just as much about celebration, as it was about saying difficult goodbyes.
One of the night’s senior speakers chose the words of Willy Wonka, a fictional character in the 1971 movie “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” to remind his fellow graduates what they should set out and accomplish.
“I know what you’re thinking, what can a candy man from the 1970s tell us?” senior Alex Reyes said.
“But, he was the one that told us, ‘Anything you want to do? Do it. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it.’”
CLASS OF 2008
Christopher Aba
