Southland ceremony today

Published 12:00 am Saturday, May 27, 2000

ADAMS – It’s the Tuesday before commencement exercises, and Larry Croker is beside himself.

Saturday, May 27, 2000

ADAMS – It’s the Tuesday before commencement exercises, and Larry Croker is beside himself.

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The Southland Public Schools principal’s shoulders are hunched as he walks quickly down a hallway, and it is hard to keep up with him.

The academic/activites awards day assembly went all right when the day began. There are so many to present to Southland students that it would take far too long to make the presentations at Sunday’s commencement exercises. There will be over 20 different scholarships presented Sunday afternoon, so the other awards are announced prior to commencement.

Croker is on his way to the lunch room, where he has left something. He retrieves the item with little fanfare and keeps moving as he makes a u-turn and stalks back down the school hallways to the gymnasium where he has just come.

Southland’s class of 2000, all dressed informally, in shorts and jeans, T-shirts and summer tops, is posing for the "official" informal class picture in the bleachers.

Once the photographers are finished, Croker takes over and rehearsal for Sunday’s 2 p.m. commencement exercises begins.

The students, sitting in the bleachers focus their attention on the principal, who proceeds to gesture, point and repeat over-and-over the details of graduation, including when to flip the tassel on the mortarboard cap from left to right. Or is it, right to left? Mr. Croker knows for sure.

After all, Croker has done this 28 times at Southland always-on-the-Sunday-before-Memorial-Day-commencement-exercises, and this year’s graduates listen attentively.

Croker demands and gets respect.

"I think what sets the Southland class of 2000 apart from the others I’ve been a part of in my career here is their academic talents," said Croker after the commencement practice session. "They’re incredibly talented and very diverse, too, but the academicians in this group are truly remarkable."

Twelve members of the class of 2000 have earned a cumulative grade point average of 3.8 or better. Eight others earned a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or better.

That’s 20 members of a class of 72 seniors.

"We really have some high achievers in this group," Croker said.

The principal also said the students’ creativity will showcase itself at Sunday’s commencement exercises. "They are probably one of the most creative graduating classes we have ever had here and the seniors decided they wanted to do some things differently at Sunday’s commencement exercises," said Croker. "There’s going to be some new music and they decided they would like to wear tricolored gowns of red, blue and silver because it’s a new millennium."

Larry Tompkins, Southland’s superintendent of schools, is only half-joking when he described the school district’s graduates, thusly: "Here at Southland, we’re like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone, and we think that all our children are above-average."

"This Southland class certainly is," Tomkins added for emphasis.

Southland’s graduates agree.

"I think we’re a very diverse group of people," said Cyle Erie, son of Vance and Deb. "We weren’t really a close-knit group like some of the other classes."

Joining in the conversation were three classmates of Erie’s: Josh Wilson, son of Dan and Marie; Jordan Hessenius, daughter of Craig and Linda; and Jessica Zillgitt, daughter of Rick and Colette.

None of them are interested in the hype over being the first graduates of the new millennium. Finishing high school is exciting enough and dealing with the last days of Mr. Croker.

"He’s just everywhere and always in a hurry," said Wilson. "He talks forever and always repeats what’s he saying to us."

"But, he’s a neat guy," said Erie.

"Everybody likes him, because he does so much for all of us," said Zillgitt.

"We love him," added Hessenius.

Maybe not a close-knit group of teenagers, but close in their admiration and affection for the man, who is guiding them through the last moments of their high school careers.

The Southland foursome shared memories of their kindergarten days at Rose Creek. Throughout their secondary education careers, they have probably attended three attendance centers in the district at Rose Creek, Elkton and Adams before the Elkton Middle School closed, and the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders attended classes at the Adams facility.

Some went to classes at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Adams.

To a person, they said they received a good education that should prepare them for either more schooling or other roads in life.

They also had favorite teachers, including the ubiquitously named "Mr. Bill" or eighth grade instructor Bill Feuchtenberger.

While Mr. Croker rates the students’ begrudging praise, Zillgitt named his wife, Joanne, a teacher and now principal at Sacred Heart Catholic School, as her favorite teacher.

Zillgitt, one of the top academicians in Southland’s class of 2000, has already made this graduation more meaningful to many with an original poem.

She read it at a special service for Little Cedar Lutheran Church’s members in the 2000 graduating class.

It reads, in part, "We have battled together through the tears of loss, we have fallen together in the wake of fights and ultimately today we will rise together in the shadow of success.

"With this triumph ends the only life most of us have ever known, for tomorrow, when we wake up, high school will no longer be made of moments, but of memories."

"It is now the end. Time to let go. To ‘let go’ is not to forget the past, but to grow and live for the future. And I tell you to approach high school this way, don’t cry because it is over. Smile because it happened," Zillgitt concluded her ode to the rite of passage.

Grant Peterson, now retired and living in Austin, is a former teacher and principal in the Adams school district, who remained to be the consolidated Southland district’s media specialist. He spent all of his 35 years in education in Adams and has strong opinions about the career he loved so much.

"I think the problem in education today are that we are losing discipline in schools. Of course, that’s only my opinion, but there are so many boys and girls from broken families and there are so many people in education, who are, like the legislature, more like lawyers than true educators, that it has resulted in an education system that is being run without educators."

Warming to the subject of the pending high school graduations, Peterson immediately softened his comments.

"The Adams school system and then the Southland system that followed have always prided themselves on a quality education for the students," he said. "That’s because they are good, solid Christians; they have good family ties and they want the best for their children.

"I got a lot of satisfaction out of my career in Adams, and commencement time was always an exciting time, but if you really care about children, there will be exciting times in the classroom, at an athletic event and when parents take pride in their sons’ and daughters’ accomplishments," he said. "Commencement was just the most exciting time of all."

This weekend, the excitement continues and, the classes of 2000 in Mower County won’t be able to hold back tears.

Neither will they be able to stop the smiles.

High school graduation is that kind of experience. Just ask mom or dad.