Cedar grads ride to ceremony in style

The 19 new Cedar High School graduates arrived in style June 3 at their commencement ceremony at the Shelton High School Performing Arts Center.

Ninety minutes before the start of the event, members of four local car clubs - the Yesteryear Car Club, Wheels of Hope, Test of Time and Kitsap Street Roadsters - pulled into the parking lot at Olympic College Shelton, the high school's home for the past year. Students in ceremonial robes and sashes picked their mode of transport.

How about the sleek white 1957 Thunderbird? Rather take your commencement ride in a deep red 1965 Corvette Sting Ray, or is the 1929 Model A Roadster with the purple flames more to your liking?

With Shelton Police, Mason County Sheriff's officers and Washington State Patrol serving as an escort, the graduates and the drivers paraded around town before the students were delivered to their commencement ceremony at Shelton High School Performing Arts Center.

This is Cedar High School's second graduating class, which spent its senior year on the new campus at Olympic College Shelton after sharing a building with CHOICE High School for a year in downtown Shelton. The school's curriculum is focused on project-based learning and collaboration.

AB Gammons, the class valedictorian, was the student speaker. Along with completing her high school diploma, Gammons earned her Associate of Arts degree.

Cedar High Principal Amber Hosford started her speech with a quote from Walt Disney: "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

"This quote was written long before you were born," she said. "Never could we have imagined you would hit 10th grade, and in the second trimester we would send you home to learn how to Zoom, to watch the news with uncertainty, to endure losses and responsibilities that were solely from the impact of a global pandemic.

"During your junior year you remained out of school until the second trimester when you could return with all sorts of conditions and nothing felt the same. This year brought you to Olympic College with new teachers, new students and new possibilities. Fun isn't a word that means easy, but it does mean exhilarating. Disney was right - again! It's kind of fun to do the impossible, and you certainly have."

The graduates are Robert Amundson, Piper Cummings, Zero Dickinson, Matt Farmer, Gemma Autumn Fitzpatrick, AB Gammons, Elena Marie Hernandez, Malachi Johns, Caleb Lanning, Jordan Lopeman-Johns, Brian Nunez, Tayona Paul, Cohen Ramage, Amaya Remigio-Mejia, Lexi Godfrey, Amanda Roeben, Kal-El Ruiz, Brooklyn Sky and James Trent.