The 139 graduates of the Perry High School Class of 2026 received diplomas in commencement exercises Sunday afternoon on the Dan Marburger Court of the PHS gymnasium.
The gowned and mortar-boarded students were ushered into the auditorium by Cate Erickson, Lily Hollingsworth, Lily Myers and Jazmine Johnson to the swelling cadences of Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” played by Jenn Hillman and Isaiah Christensen.
The graduates were then edified by addresses from Perry Community School District Superintendent of Schools Clark Wicks, Senior Class President Catherine Miranda and Student Body President Madeline McDevitt.
The PHS Class of 2026 was presented by Principal Brad Snowgren. Diplomas were presented to the graduates by Wicks, Perry Community School District Board of Directors President Linda Andorf and Directors Eddie Diaz and Joe Tuhn.
The Perry High School Concert Choir, directed by Jenn Nelson, sang Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” The 1960’s social-change icon sold his songs and recordings in 2020 and 2021 for about $500 million.
Family, friends and well wishers repeatedly erupted in cheers for the graduating seniors, who aptly embody the quotation in the high school foyer that stands like an epigraph to the seniors’ story: “The public school is the greatest institution for the encouragement of real democracy existing. Its policy is to place all people on an equal basis.”
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam,
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown,
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin’,
Then you better start swimmin’,
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen,
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again,
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin,
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come senators, congressmen,
Please heed the call.
Don’t stand in the doorway.
Don’t block up the hall.
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled.
There’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land,
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand.
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command.
Your old road is rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.
The line it is drawn.
The curse it is cast.
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past.
The order is rapidly fadin’,
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’