By CRISTINE MEIXNER

Express Editor

WELLS - It was standing room only at the Wells Central School Class of 2011 graduation Friday, with every chair taken and standing people lining the walls.

Noting she has spent 14 years looking at the same faces, Salutatorian Samantha Bartholf added, “but it’s not every school where you can go down to the elementary wing and say ‘hi’ to your favorite second-grade teacher.”

She added, “It’s kind of terrifying to be 18” and leaving.

“The Class of 2011 came to me as seventh-graders,” Class Advisor Barb King said, “too cool for school.”

“We worked hard together building a class and somehow along the way became a family,” she said, before noting some positive attributes of each of the graduates.

“Go out and climb mountains,” she told them, “but never forget your way home.”

18 TO COLLEGE

King said of the 28 graduates, 18 are going to college, three into military service and five into employment.

Valedictorian Ryan Woodward is one of those pursuing college; or rather, in his case, continuing college.

Woodward attended Fulton-Montgomery Community College in Johnstown for the past two years, earning an associate’s degree. He will continue college at St. Lawrence University in Canton in the fall, where he will study pre-law.

Saying Woodward skipped his FMCC graduation ceremony to play in a baseball game with his WCS varsity team, Interim Superintendent of Schools Dr. John Zeis presented him with his associate’s degree.

‘GREAT MEMORIES’

Woodward spoke about his special friends at WCS, telling a humorous anecdote about each.

One friend he first saw when Woodward was in fifth grade and his friend in third. “He was running around outside his house in a Rockhounds t-shirt, shorts and boots waving a wooden sword. Here we are, eight years later, and I’ve realized some things never change.”

Woodward singled out Guidance Counselor Sharon Parslow as “an unsung hero at Wells Central School.”

“Thank you all for the great memories,” he concluded.

‘GO AND DO IT’

Junior Michael Rhodes, speaking for the Class of 2012, implored the graduates to remember, as President Ronald Regan said, “There are no constrains on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.”

“I know that every one of this class has the ability to do something great in their lives,” Rhodes said. “Now, go and do it.”

Zeis said some members of the Class of 2011 strove to do well while some were pushed and pulled along, but all were on the stage graduating. WCS Board of Education President Cathie Rust presented the diplomas.