On a warm, summerlike day, 174 seniors graduated Sunday from Nazareth Academy in La Grange Park.
“I wouldn’t have anticipated even a month ago we would be able to have a fairly traditional graduation,” said Nazareth’s Class of 2021 Valedictorian Ron Glas. “So many people have been vaccinated, we could have a decent size crowd.”
Each graduate could invite four guests to the ceremony, which was held in the football stadium.
In his address to the class, Glas, who has been vaccinated, focused on the theme of unity, using a canvas and the threads through it as a metaphor for the connections between the students.
“With this past year, when we were all really physically separated because of the coronavirus, I wanted to focus on the bonds we formed over the past years through clubs and sports and activities and classes,” said Glas, who lives in Darien. “You may not be connected to everyone in each class, but you are connected to one, who is connected to another, who is connected to another and that way you form bonds.”
Glas said he wrote his speech for his fellow graduates, rather than directing it to the parents and other relatives in the stands.
“I think that made it easier because I forgot about the people in the stands.”
But his words resonated with them, too, because many adults told him afterward how meaningful they thought his speech was.
“He surprised me,” said Glas’ mother, Maria. “He wouldn’t let me read the speech.” She only heard it the night before graduation.
Hearing it again during the commencement, “I was brought to tears,” Maria Glas said.
Salutatorian Dan Metzger of La Grange gave the opening prayer. He is the youngest of four boys in his family to graduate from Nazareth. Metzger plans to attend University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which his brother Kevin, who graduated last year, also attends.
“It was kind of rough not seeing half the kids,” during his senior year, Metzger said, referring to the hybrid instruction schedule. The students were divided into two groups, which alternated day by day between in person or remote. “Nazareth did the best they could and a lot better than some schools,” Metzger said. And playing on the golf and tennis teams “totally helped,” he said.
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Megan Henehan of La Grange received the Sister Oliver Donlin Service Award. Other students were recognized for their accomplishments at the school’s Awards Day Ceremony Friday, but the Sister Oliver Donlin award is the only one announced at the graduation ceremony.
“Megan has been an outstanding leader throughout her high school years and a young woman who embodies and excels in all four of our pillars, of scholarship, service, spirit and unity,” Principal Therese Hawkins said in presenting the award.
“Her teachers and counselor describe her as humble and quietly self-assured,” Hawkins said. “She freely gives of her time and talent through volunteering in many capacities,” including serving on class boards all four years, as a Eucharistic minister, a member of the environmental club, National Honor Society and Mu Alpha Theta, helping host our FISH Prom for teens with disabilities and, most recently, providing weekly tutoring for a 2nd grade boy who is a refugee from Sudan.
Henehan will attend Boston College in the fall.
