Last Friday night in Wetumpka, the Tallassee High School Class of 2025 walked across the football field and into their futures.
It has certainly been an interesting high school ride for this group. When they arrived at THS, we were just emerging from the Covid pandemic and a year of schedules that operated on an A-B rotation. The old building had been torn down, and classes met in trailers parked on the band practice field (yes, I know they were officially Mobile Learning Spaces, but everyone called them trailers).
For their junior and senior years, the class of 2025 became the first to inhabit the new Tallassee High School. They went on to earn over $2.1 million in scholarships and send students into careers, the military, or college.
This class of 133 graduates had certainly seen a lot of change during their four years of high school, and right up until the end, change was a constant presence. In their final few weeks of high school, both administrative positions were changing as Mr. Drew Glass was being replaced by Dr. Crystal Adams and Mrs. Brooke Barron was being replaced by Coach Joshua Harrison.
Many years ago, a colleague at Southside Middle School nicknamed my son Gregory “the prince,” since he is the only boy out of seven children. Yes – six girls and one boy. And he is the middle man, as number five out of the seven.
It could not have been easy in that environment. I’m a dainty musician, not the average kind of dad. And since I don’t know how to do much of anything, Gregory has had to do so much on his own to become a man. He joined Boy Scouts when he was between second and third grades and if all goes well, he will complete his Eagle Scout rank in just a couple of weeks.
Let me say that I am incredibly proud of him for his decision to join the military. In October, he enlisted in the Army National Guard and will be leaving the Bird Nest in June for Basic Training at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. If we are able to attend his graduation in October, we’ll get to see him briefly before he moves on to his next assignment.
Joining the military is a brave and grown-up thing to do. While I have a deep appreciation for those who serve, I never felt I had the strength of character to be a part of something so vital and important to our national defense. To know that “the prince” will be serving our country has been, and will be, a source of pride for our family going forward.
So now that number five of seven is flying the proverbial coop, something is happening that once seemed so distant: our household is about to be down to just two kids.
Michael Bird is a music teacher at Faulkner University.
