Viewfinder: Bonney Lake High School Graduation

Bonney Lake High School’s graduation on Tuesday evening at the Puyallup Fair Showplex hit both high and low notes. After the soon-to-be graduates entered step-by-step to “Pomp and Circumstance” and the Chamber Choir sang the National Anthem, Principal Linda Masteller requested that the audience observe a moment of silence for Jaryd Bartlette.

Bartlette would have walked with the class of 2013, if not for a fateful car crash on September 24, 2011. His friend, Jordon Horrocks, spoke on his behalf before he and Nicholas Cotton received Bartlette’s diploma and delivered it to his mother.

All three of the class speakers—Ramsey Thoms, Alexandra Haack and Tyler Rogers—honored Bartlette in their speeches, exhibiting just how much his life and death have affected the class of 2011. However, Rogers reminded the seniors, their friends and families that graduation is supposed to be a happy day, and promised that the next time they saw him he would be hot and rich.

Two valedictorians, Alexandra Ehle and Reed Hawkins, and one salutatorian, Katelyn Koens, sat on stage with the Board of Directors and several school administrators.

In the end, 293 seniors received their diplomas and, before Senior Class Advisor Tiana Nelson even had a chance to declare them official graduates of BLHS, they began to celebrate, tossing beach balls and mortarboards into the air.

They flooded out of the Showplex in a teal and black tidal wave of relief and pride.