Graduation Ceremonies Weather Cloudbursts : Education: Newbury Park event marred by attack on principal. Stormy skies force Westlake commencement indoors.

As he gazed out at the 335 seniors graduating from Newbury Park High School on Friday, keynote speaker John Uelmen reserved his highest praise not for the students, nor for his fellow teachers, but for the parents.

“You’ll find that the greatest teachers of all are your parents,” Uelmen told the graduates, praising the fathers and mothers in the bleachers who chose children instead of large-screen TVs, long vacations, extra money and the chance to drive something other than a minivan.

Most of the parents looked on with smiles, and Uelmen’s flattering words weren’t the only reason: Despite the heavy rain early Friday, no one was soaked at the graduation ceremonies.

By the time Newbury Park’s services began at 6 p.m., the skies had cleared. And at nearby Westlake High School, 390 students graduated indoors, in the school’s gym.

The ceremonies at Newbury Park were marred by one event. A disgruntled student rushed the stage and knocked down principal Charles E. Eklund around 7 p.m. The 17-year-old male student, not identified because of his age, was rushed away by sheriff’s deputies who were working security.

“The kid just ran up and tackled him,” said Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Larry Logan. Logan said the youth was supposed to have graduated Friday but was barred from the ceremony because he missed rehearsal. The youth was still in custody Friday night.

Eklund was not seriously hurt and continued the service. He was treated later for minor head injuries at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

Over at Westlake, onlookers were more concerned with spotting particular graduates in the sea of youths clothed in caps and gowns. Many Westlake parents pondered parenthood--its trials as much as its triumphs.

“I’m glad it’s over,” said Dennis Morris, a benefits consultant who noted that his daughter Christina had not returned home from a night celebrating her impending graduation until 7 that morning.

“They didn’t go to sleep last night,” Morris said.

A graduation could even make a father feel old.

“I’m way too young to have somebody graduate from high school,” protested Charlie Gaughan, whose daughter Regina was finishing at Westlake.

Maybe you had to be a grandparent to revel without any reservations.

“It’s nice to see her so smart! Smart like I was!” said Wil Gaughan, Regina’s grandfather, a retired civil engineer who drove from Phoenix for the occasion.

As for the student speakers, they seemed to address their thoughts less to their parents than to their peers.

Westlake High School graduate Scott Nussbaum spoke of the lessons the seniors learned in four years. Some of the most important experiences came not in the classroom, but on the freeways, he said.

“Many of us got our first ticket, our second ticket, our third. Our first car accident, our second, our third,” Nussbaum said.

And filling out auto insurance forms was not the only life skill students have learned, he said.

For instance, “Every senior knows that the beach takes precedence over school only when it’s over 80 degrees outside.”

At Newbury Park High School, students spoke of the future, success and heroism, quoting authorities from transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson to football coach Vince Lombardi and vowing to make a difference in the world.

There, too, some of the lessons of high school evoked groans from parents. One was Jeremy Wilson’s memory of a sophomore-year encounter with a fetal pig in biology class:

“After the fourth day of dissecting, they didn’t really look like pigs anymore, but like brown-hued piles of pudding,” Wilson said.

By the end of the speeches, though, it was hard to feel anything but optimism. As Newbury Park’s graduation drew to a close in the wake of the passing storm, the surrounding mountains were bathed in yellow light.

Uelmen summed it up: “I look out at these sheltering hills and I say to myself, it’s another perfect day.”