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Pergrad

I sat in Perry High School 28 years ago, listening to a commencement speaker and inspired by the same thought which inspires you here tonight....WE LEAVE ON SENIOR TRIP TOMORROW! WHEN’S HE GOING TO SHUT UP?

Been Looking this week for Perry. Since this is the last week we’ll be able to FIND Perry High School, I thought I’d better look quick. I found a few things. (items) And what I discovered is that Perry wasn’t here. All I had was a sweater ....cotton...a yearbook, paper and cardboard.. Medal..2nd because I didn’t get it memorized...cloth and steel. An athletic letter...fuzzy wool, I guess. But Perry wasn’t there. That was not the Perry that produced so many years of remarkable students. Stack them in a pile and it still wasn’t Perry. Stack it as high as a building, and it still wasn’t Perry.

---Perry ...the Perry I knew and the Perry you know, and the Perry that the oldest graduate in this room knows, was at the White Bridge creek this week, at the Danny Meyers farm filling sandbags. That’s a Perry which will not be consolodated into another school district. That’s a Perry which has very little to do with bricks and metal-roofed gymnasiums. ---Perry is neighbors putting aside their own work to put in Dale White’s crops. ---Perry is the community giving their time and finances, buying shares of the Wagon Wheel and the Locker, to keep both going. ---Perry is a group of churches coming together for Easter and Memorial Day services, the community chorus, jumping into the horse-drawn wagons and caroling at Christmas time, organizing the biggest little stop on the Fall color tour, an EMT squad that casually does things like saving our lives. ---Perry is an American Legion post and Masonic Lodge more active than in towns five times it’s size. ---The real Perry...the one that means the most to you and me, is the Perry that came together to give support to Steve and Cathy Herd. ---Perry is Pioneer Day, The Smorgaasbord, Brenda DeSpain and the Girl Scouts deciding that the band stand needed to be decorated at Christmas. So they did it...without a federal grant. ---Perry is Buddy K Thompson running across the street to get his Wall Street Journal and threatening every Cardinal fan and Democrat with his life, then flipping you double or nothing for your groceries...That’s a Perry that consoldation will never affect. ---It’s Harry Read building boats in his basement and adorning the town with his native art, believing that a restaurant and a general store are every bit as valid an art gallery as The Louvre or the Hermitage. ---It’s Johnny Johnson’s house of two hundred clocks, John Kennedy’s year-long quest to outdo himself on the parade float, Bob Brim’s spending an hour to help you pick out just the right five-cent item, Charlie Doane’s truck hauling you anything anywhere, Pat White’s smile as you get on the morning bus, It’s Gwen Woods’ stories of your parents and grandparents, Bill Thiele’s charging too little for the best work anywhere. It’s Carl Quincy being unable to hear you shout “I’m on the bus tonight, Carl!” and taking the school bus two miles past your grandma’s house, ---It’s Elmer Bradbury getting angry at his oldest son for spending ten cents too much for candy bars then giving hundreds of dollars away to help a desititute family. ---The Perry that’s of most value to you is the Perry that taught you to swim in the town creek, swing in the park, getting your first kiss in the alley in fact, it was......, and standing surrounded by friends at the cemetery. ---Perry is people....It’s not my yearbook, my athletic letter, or this building. ---The most valuable thing Perry has given you cannot be found within these walls. If you are a graduate of Perry, its most valuable gift to you is not to be discovered within textbooks or basketball hoops. If you have not yet graduated, the Treasure of Perry is still here for your taking. Once you get away from Perry, you’ll realize how unique the spirit of this town actually is. ---And you’ll find that he most precious and unique thing about Perry is not a school building. ---The treasure of Perry is its People. ---I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life from a man who taught me that athletics are a Game...to be enjoyed, above all...Fred Witham...of Perry. ---I learned how to teach under the finest administrator I’ve ever known in my life: James Brim...of Perry. ---I’ve traveled nine times around the world with hundreds of people in all sorts of hairy situations...yet the three that remain the most level-headed, joy-filled, and adventurous are named Thiele, Whittaker, and Curry...all of Perry. ---And if I drive home tonight and a Pike County deer jumps through my window and knocks my head into McGee Creek, then I’m going to take a trip that’s going to put your little Hawaiian excursion to shame, because .... ...Someone taught me about Jesus Christ just two blocks from here...in Perry.

---I’ve spent the last 23 years teaching in a community that thirty years ago went though a painful, noisey, and friendship-shattering consolodation process. We have lost Arenzville High School! We have lost Chapin High School! We have become Triopia and the end is near! It wasn’t. It wasn’t even close. Twenty years later the cries were the same: We’ve lost Concord grade school! We’ve lost Arenzville Grade School! We’ve lost Chapin Grade School! The end is near! It wasn’t. Now we have to go to the office to look up who came from where. Even the kids often forgetten.

---And Arenzville, and Chapin, and Concord remain basically the same. And we have discovered that the secret was something much deeper....much stronger...much more powerful than the school...it was its people. ---It was the movers and shakers and those who care...those who give themselves daily because they would consider no other way to live...the Vivian and Roger Smiths, the Bob Reeves, Gail Emersons, the Kathy Cawthons, the Mark Dickersons, the Nikki and Daren Mountains. the Jim McCains ... ---It was not Perry’s fine athletic facilities that put Joel Dougherty over the bar last weekend. He was lifted by ....the people.

---Class of 1995, Take Perry with you. Its treasure remains...It’s the people. It’s the people.. And now you are one of them. ---Channel 7 interviewed Patrick Walker on the news last night. When asked about his new school he talked about needing more boys in his class. Even in 4th grade, his main concern was the people. LET IT BE YOURS.

Statistics say that most of you will not stay in Perry. That’s fine. Many others will. ---But when you return, as I did, to look for Perry....don’t look for it in these walls....Look instead for Perry where I found it....sitting right in front of you here tonight. And take THAT with you.