LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — The names of 651 students were read as they walked one at a time across the platform inside Rupp Arena to accept their high school diplomas. For their parents in the stands, it felt like those names were just being read on a kindergarten teacher’s attendance roll.
“You’re going to make me cry. I’m not gonna do it,” Bruce Dillon joked before Thursday’s ceremony began for his child and the others at Lafayette High School. Lafayette was the first of six commencement ceremonies that’ll take place at Rupp on Thursday and Friday.
As Bruce was trying to keep his emotions in check, the students were in the garage below the arena getting their final instructions for the walk, taking pictures, and just enjoying one another’s company for, possibly, the last time.
“I’ll miss not seeing everybody,” Ian Lowell said. He then reminded himself that some of his classmates, like him, will be attending UK in the fall, so that allowed him to feel better about the situation.
“My dad’s parents graduated from here, my dad graduated from here, and my mom did and now works here, so to be the last of my family in this legacy is pretty cool,” Athena Adams said before the ceremony. She’ll be attending Western Kentucky in the fall to focus on Physical Therapy.
Each has a different story, but they all reached the same finish line together. Not even a pandemic, which was still raging across America during their freshman year, could get in their way.
“Covid year was awful, it was so slow,” Adams said. “But once we got back in the building [it flew], it felt like, ‘we’re seniors now? That’s crazy,’” she continued.
