Genoa Central High School 2025 Senior Perspective
The Love Around Us
A message from Genoa Central High School Valedictorian, Grace Ashmore
Friends, family, faculty, and fellow graduates, good evening. I am honored to be speaking tonight, and I would not be here without the support of many of the people I see in front of me. Throughout this elementary, middle, and now high school journey, I have been loved. We have been loved by our friends and our families, our mothers and our fathers, our sisters and our brothers. But we have also been loved in smaller ways—quieter ways, throughout our lives as students in the public school system. We have been loved by janitors, who work tirelessly to ensure we have a clean space in which we can thrive. Oftentimes, we don't realize just how much of a privilege cleanliness is in this world. We have been loved by school resource officers. They gave us our first speeding tickets, right in front of the elementary school playground we had played tag in just a few years before. They have saved us from unknown threats, saved us from ourselves. We have been loved by school nurses, who learned our patterns in elementary school. They knew when we were really sick, or when we just needed a hug. They let us cry in their offices, they let us come to them, and they patched us up with colorful bandages and sent us off with a peppermint. We have been loved by secretaries, who ask us about our lives and greet us with bright good mornings when we aren't feeling the best. As we checked out of high school for the very last time just a few days ago, we were not forgotten, not by the person who watched us leave safely each day for four years. We have been loved by counselors, who changed our schedules at least five times apiece on the first day of school. Those elementary and middle school dances we all loved? They organized them. When we had problems with other students or just needed a listening ear, a counselor was always there. We have been loved by principals, who have supported us from the beginning. When we messed up, when we fell and took others with us, they picked us up, dusted us off, and called our moms. You don't realize just how special it is to be known and guided by an authority figure until you suddenly find yourself serving beneath someone who doesn't care, and then you begin to miss the things you never thought you would. One of these things is quotes, such as the familiar: "The decisions you make today affect the quality of your life tomorrow," Now, the wording of that quotation may not be quite right, but in writing this speech, I picked that sentence from my memory of every school event and every sit-down talk in the principal's office, at least from high school. However, as all our parents remind us almost daily, it is true. Not only that, but caring so much about your students, about their futures, takes a whole lot of love, especially with high schoolers. We have been so loved by our teachers, each one in a different way. They listen to us, listen to our teenage problems, the ones that we will forget in an hour, and the ones that we will never forget. They keep us on track and show us focus, but they let us be silly, and they are silly right along with us. They let us create and explore. They see our tears, they check on us when we skip class in the bathroom, or when we seem down and need a friend. They give us every chance, every opportunity to learn and succeed. Our teachers hunt down each of our favorite candies as a prize for a contest that no one won. Our teachers stay after school to sponsor our clubs, which we aren't quite sure how to run, but have somehow survived by the school year's end. Our teachers write us notes, give us little bags of trinkets and snacks before our big exams, the ones we dread all year long. They bring us pizza when we could use a treat, an incentive to keep our poor, tired brains going. They care. We are so incredibly blessed to be graduating from a school that cares. A school that loves. Regardless of your experience, I think we can all agree that there is something unique, something special, about this school. It is not test scores, it is not federal funding. It is love.
1 Corinthians 13:7 tells us: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." That verse may sound familiar, and it is widely quoted because it is true. Love bears all bad attitudes, believes all cries for help, hopes for the success of each and every student, and endures all drama and strife. It is said in the same chapter, "Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love." Not only will you continue to love and be loved throughout your life, but you will always carry the love that has been given to you in your heart. Love never ends, it never fades. Love is both a feeling and a choice. Just as our school has chosen to love us through good and bad, joy and grief, from young to now slightly less young, we also have been given a choice; a choice to keep that love within our hearts, to carry it on and to pass it through to the next generation, the next set of graduates. This love will never end. This love will never fail, this love will never run dry, this love will never let down. Because this love is from God.
We are preparing now, preparing to step into our futures. We are leaving for college in a few short months, beginning trade school, starting our new careers, and building families. But, and if you take nothing else from my words, Class of 2025, take this: without love, without God, all of this is meaningless. Nothing that we are working to accomplish, nothing that we want, nothing that we need can heal our broken hearts, except the love of our Creator.
I know this to be the absolute truth. God is love. God is present in the small things, present in these diligent acts that we have grown so accustomed to. He is in the borrowed pencil, the one that was your classmate's favorite, the one they lent to you for the day, and never saw again. He is in the orange juice that your friend never drinks, that you always somehow end up with on your tray at lunch. You love orange juice. He is in the sticky note on your desk, the one marked with a smiley face in unfamiliar handwriting. Maybe it wasn't meant for you, but you saw it anyway, and you smiled, too. He is also in the Sharpie-d handwriting on the school bathroom's walls. Some of the words written there are not entirely appropriate, but there, in the corner of your favorite stall, there is a little note you haven't seen before, which reads: "You've got this." Because you do. He is in the hallway conversations with teachers you haven't had in class, but that talk to you anyways, that give you compliments on your shoes or your hair when you don't feel attractive, when you almost didn't get out of your bed just a few hours before. He is in the smile, the smile you need to see first thing in the morning after a rough night at the hospital, hoping and praying that the person that you will always miss is now safe in his arms. He is in the knowing and the unknowing, the intentional and the instinctual acts of kindness that are planted throughout our lives by the people we see every day and people we will never see again.
My grandfather understood this better than anyone I have ever known. He knew how to give love freely, how to show it quietly, without decoration or dramatics. He never made big declarations of love or grand gestures of kindness, at least not any that I was aware of. But the things he did, well, they felt big when he did them. He didn't give love for himself. He never gave it to look good or to be something he was not. True love, as he knew, is small, consistent, and individualized. It exists to be passed on from one person to the next, to anchor us to each other, and to the world we live in. My grandfather gave each member of his family a word of advice before he passed. Each person had a specific message, a role to fulfill. He gave us a task and a call to action. The one thing he made clear to all of us, the thing that remained constant throughout his farewells, was this: Put God first. He is with me tonight, in my mother's beautiful smile, in my brother's green eyes, in my words and in my heart, and his wisdom remains true. So, to everyone listening, focus on God. Focus on love. Love those around you, see love when it is given, and appreciate it. Love is patient, love is kind. It is everywhere if you just look for it. If you focus on love, if you focus on God, then you can get through this transitional period, this transformation we have only just begun, from childhood to our teenage years, and now to our young adulthood, through any struggle, any joy, any high or low. Without God, we cannot make it through life. Only through love, only through Jesus' ultimate act of love at Calvary, can we live, live fully and eternally. We must not forget that love has never been so freely given as it was on that cross two thousand years ago, on that first truly good Friday. And, with that, I say: go, fellow graduates, Class of 2025, go and love. Love, and be loved.
