Graduation Day: A Tale of Two High Schools

There were tears in the eyes of Richard and Vicki Eveleth Tuesday afternoon while they watched the 443 graduates of La Jolla High School march to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” on the athletic field.

Downtown, Philip Diehl’s eyes watered as 149 seniors from Lincoln High received their diplomas one-by-one on the stage of Golden Hall Tuesday night.

In itself, the emotion of the moment was not surprising, as parents and students routinely become misty-eyed at the culmination of the high school years.

But Diehl and the Eveleths are teachers, not parents, and their reactions revealed an aspect of an instructor’s academic year not often considered during graduation.

For these and many other teachers, graduation means much more than the end of school and a well-deserved respite. Their recognition of students passing by--many of whose lives were intertwined with theirs for three or more years--stimulates a mental review of the laughs, the frustrations and the achievements by which the Eveleths and the Diehls and their colleagues measure their own successes.

“I think we have the same emotions as the parents do,” said Richard Eveleth, an 18-year veteran at La Jolla High, as well as a 1964 La Jolla graduate, who now teaches world history and coaches basketball. “You hate to see them go but know they must go.”

“We’ve been with many, especially the athletes, for four hours a day, three months at a time, for three years, and you know as much emotionally about them as the parents do,” said Vicki, who met her husband when she began teaching at La Jolla 15 years ago. “God, Rick has even had single parents come and ask him to take a father role, and I’ve had girls with eating disorders come up and ask for help and advice.”

Vicki teaches psychology and coaches the school’s volleyball teams. Because of their varied involvement in academics and athletics, the Eveleths are known by almost the entire student body. Even their 9-year-old son, Ty, is a familiar face on campus before and after his primary school classes at nearby Torrey Pines Elementary.

“When the kids come up and tell you during the last week about something you did in class that had an impact on their life it really makes you feel good, since you never knew whether they were really listening or not.” Richard found several letters from students in his school mailbox this week thanking him for motivating them in class.

During the past week, the Eveleths said, many students talked about their own apprehensions as graduation was upon them, about whether they had chosen the right college, about leaving home for the first time. Those topics are central at a school like La Jolla, where 83% of the seniors go on to four-year colleges.

‘All Kinds of Success

“I see the students this week and think, ‘Gee, here’s a guy who is making it, who I first saw as a little nerd in the 10th grade,’ ” Richard said. “I thought, ‘No way will he ever make it,’ and then a light goes on in their head and that guy is now ready to go out and be successful.

“That is really emotional for me, really exciting, to see all kinds of success like that.”

Although the couple said that every student stirs particular memories, the black and Latino students who ride the bus an hour or more to La Jolla each day, touch a special chord.

“I think of what they have gone through, how many hours on a bus, yet doing all the homework, and I realize how much they want to be successful and how much that we want them to be successful,” Richard said.

“I recall after (athletic) practices, seeing them wait around at 9 at night for a bus to pick them up and then the bus is late, and realizing that they really have to want to get an education,” Vicki said, tears coming to her eyes in simply describing the experiences.

Richard told of the single-parent mother from Southeast San Diego who has put four sons through La Jolla, all of whom have gone on to universities such as Oregon State or, as in the case of the youngest graduating Tuesday, an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

“Or the mother (from Southeast) who has ridden the bus to a job at the school along with her kids for many years,” Vicki said.

For Diehl at Lincoln, the district’s inner-city school with a 96% non-white enrollment, every graduating senior gives him a strong emotional lift because of the school’s checkered past.

“I am so proud of those students who get through despite horrendous situations in their home life and in the community, who nevertheless turn their lives around and make it,” said Diehl, an English teacher at Lincoln for 11 years.

‘The Icing on the Cake’

The school’s new principal, Ruby Cremaschi, mandated this year that only those students who fulfilled all credits for graduation could participate in ceremonies. In previous years, Lincoln followed the general policy at other city high schools that allows students to participate if they agree to make up needed credits in summer school. But many students fail to do so.

“What is so emotional at Lincoln is that, for so many students, graduation is going to be the culminating factor in their lives,” Diehl said. “I hate to say this, but for many this is it, the icing on the cake, the top wrung on the ladder, as far as they will go, sort of a fulfillment of their dreams.

“In the future, I’ll see them out in the community, working in menial jobs or on welfare, and it is sad.

“Yet, when I see them graduating, I still have hope for all of them, hoping against all odds that they will succeed, despite having so many students over the years turn up as statistics in the paper, involved in a shooting or some type of arrest report.

“I’ve chosen to stay at Lincoln, even though the staff is often a revolving door, because I can really see when a student makes a gain, I can almost feel it myself, and when that student stays in school and wants to rewrite a paper, wants to stay after class and sit with me in the learning center after school and talk, who we’ve shown that college is a real possibility for them, it’s really meaningful to see that student up on the stage . . . . I get a vicarious thrill.”

But Diehl also recalled faces that were not in the ceremony Tuesday, those who dropped out along the line. “I have to be careful not to be totally depressed, not to assume total responsibility for why that student couldn’t turn around, even though it’s tough thinking about it,” he said.

Both Diehl and the Eveleths already are looking forward to next fall and a new group of students to mold into successful graduates. Diehl will even teach summer school--trying to hone the basic skills of students unsuccessful during the regular school year--while the Eveleths will unwind during a monthlong camping trip.

“I’m always ready and roaring to get back for a new challenge, especially since we’re trying at Lincoln to put together some real good curriculum, department by department, so that our diplomas will be more meaningful,” Diehl said.

“Perhaps we’re a little idealistic, but I think that, in teaching and coaching, we’re giving back to society what it has given to us,” Richard Eveleth said.