Graduations Mix Solemnity and High Spirits

Kimberly Jacobs, senior class president at Adolfo Camarillo High, described graduation day this way: The children of the 1980s became the young adults of the 1990s.

More than 2,500 graduating seniors on five campuses in Camarillo, Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Rio Mesa savored the rite of passage on Friday with a mixture of fond remembrance and eager anticipation, mature solemnity and youthful exuberance.

Beach balls periodically bobbed through the rows of 550 graduates in Camarillo between bouts of the wave.

The 458 Rio Mesa High grads shot Silly String through the air at the conclusion of their ceremony.

At Rio Mesa, they remembered the smell of nearby strawberry fields being fertilized during classes.

At Camarillo, they recalled coffee runs to Starbuck’s during late-night study sessions.

At Rio Mesa, the school newspaper, The Spartan, advertised an “end-of-school sale” on body piercing that some in the crowd appear to have enthusiastically embraced.

At Camarillo High, a light aircraft droned over the football stadium trailing a banner congratulating two students on their academic milestone.

In Camarillo, school officials noted the class of 1997-1998 was the first to be recognized as graduating from a nationally designated blue-ribbon school.

In Rio Mesa, Assistant Vice Principal Mike Vollmert marveled that the students appeared to be more politically aware and community-oriented, while still achieving high grades, than any graduating class he had seen since he began teaching 13 years ago.

Meanwhile, Camarillo graduate Chris Jewell was merely hoping to make it through the ceremony without undue pain or embarrassment because he had badly sprained an ankle while diving through a hedge the night before.

“I hope I don’t trip out there; I haven’t quite mastered the crutches yet,” he said nervously, before hobbling onto the field with his classmates. “I’ve never done anything like this--and I do it the night before graduation.”

“At least he’s easy to find,” said giggling mom Sandi Brown of her bobbing offspring.

There was pain of another kind at Oxnard High, where many returned from the festivities to find unwelcome gifts: parking tickets.

A lack of space on the new campus at 3400 W. Gonzales Road forced people to park some distance away, including dirt expanses on Gonzales Road.

Police were notified by local farm owners that drivers had illegally parked on private land.

Then there were those bittersweet moments.

John Huang, Rio Mesa’s Harvard-bound co-valedictorian, performed the Green Day group’s classic “Good Riddance (The Time of Your Life)” on guitar, bringing a tear to the eye of some in the crowd of more than 3,000.

And Rebecca Stackhouse struck a similar emotional chord in the overflow crowd of proud relatives in Camarillo when she recited the words of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.”

“May God bless and keep you always/May your wishes all come true/May you always do for others/And let others do for you/May you build a ladder to the stars/And climb on every rung/May you stay forever young.”

The emotional toll was a bit much for the likes of 38-year-old Rogelio Sanchez Sr. He stood quietly clutching a bunch of balloons as he watched the first of his six children graduate, Rogelio Sanchez Jr., whose 3.9 grade-point average will take him to UC Irvine this fall.

“Very proud,” he said wistfully when asked how he felt. “It does feel a bit strange.”

Change is strange. And change was the order of the day Friday.

For many it was about time.

The school year had been extended three weeks in a pilot program intended to cram a little more knowledge in formative minds before students head out to the big wide world.

“It’s tough,” said Cesar Vergara of his senior-year experience as he waited in line for his diploma at Rio Mesa.

And life wasn’t about to get any easier, he allowed.

Come Aug. 3, he will head to Marines boot camp.

* EXTENDED-SCHOOL VALEDICTORIANS: B9