Ionia High School - Ionian Yearbook (Ionia, MI)

Page 29 text:

Salutatory BY GEORGE TAFT. '10 P ATRONS, friends, members of the Board of Education, teachers and classmates, we greet you. We have today reached the con- summation of our hopes as high school students. The moment is at hand for which we have waited for four years, the point on which our eyes have been fixed since our first morning as Freshmen, an occasion made dear to us through our hopes and our aspirations. On this June morning when everything is so joyous and full of life, we beg of you to share with us some of the enthusiasm which we feel surging through us. Go back to the days when you were graduates, bring back those fond memories and put yourselves in a position to con- sider with us the meaning of Commencement Time. This day ends our first step in tin; preparation of what is to follow. IIow well we are pre- pared, the superstructure of the coming years will determine. When a mason sets out to build a tower he must insure a firm founda- tion before he can go on with the structure. Then as the work progress- es scaffolds have to be erected, one on the other. He must also be very careful in his actions, for a misstep will mean a fall, possibly death, and he must be scrupulously accurate about his measurements, for a single stone misplaced will mean failure when the work is completed. At last it is all but finished and he is reaching up to place the last stone, it is done! He has reached the acme of his profession. Everything is perfect and the completed tower stands ready for the use for which it was intended. Thus it is with ourselves, our character growth and de- velopment. When we are young we move under our parents’ guidance and with their help form a strong foundation for after life. As we grow older we must needs depend more and more on our own efforts, be more careful of our actions and little by little assume the cares and duties of life. Through all these experiences we are building our structure, using at each successive stage that which we have before acquired as a foun- dation. A life fully developed along such lines for us all spells success, success in the sense that every opportunity for development has been seized and improved and the finished product is therefor well nigh pei- fect. Success, however, of this nature is not easy to attain, for just as the mason may mar the beauty of his structure by a single blunder so we may thwart our purpose by a simple mistake. If the mason had not been thoroughly prepared, efficiently trained for his work, nothing

Page 28 text:

Class Day Exercises IONIA HIGH SCHOOL CAMPUS WEDNESDAY. 9 A. M„ JUNE 22. 1910 MARCH . . . HIGH SCHOOL ORCHESTRA (Annual Winding of the Oak Leaf Chain) SALUTATORY .... GEORGE TAFT HISTORY.....................ETHEL CONNER (Aided by Will Bouck, Harry Cobb. Marion Spencer and Grace Beattie) PHROPHECY . . HELEN JANE WILKINSON (Aided by Corinne Wolverton and Eva Klingenberg) MUSIC............................. ORCHESTRA GIFTORIAN'S ADDRESS . HAZEL GOODWIN VALEDICTORY . . . WILLIAM DOUGLASS CLASS SONG.................CLASS OF 1910 MUSIC....................... ORCHESTRA

Page 30 text:

worthy of noto would have resulted. Likewise with us. If our prepara- tion these twelve years we have been in school has been of the best our future life will run accordingly. If it has not been what it should be, then our life will have to suffer the penalty. No one accomplishes anything worth while these days without pre- paration. Even the detested book agent spends weeks in study, before going into the field. He must learn his pre-canvass, canvass proper art- icles to fit different types of people, and a closing speech to bind tin order, if he gets it or a polite fire of words, on a retreat, if he is rejected. The history of literature is full of instances of the untiring and relentless energy which have been used in preparing certain great works. Pres- cott, for instance, spent fifteen years in reading and in preliminary work on his South American histories and Motley spent thirty years in tin; preparation of his history of the Dutch. And so. if we are going to ex- perience the deepest meaning of that word success we must make our preparation just as thorough and just as far reaching as possible. The future is before us. We are to be the people of tomorrow, and if age is to bear the same relation to the present age that the present age bears to the past, we have a great task on our hands. It therefor remains for us to create out of ourselves greater men and women than yesterday produced. People who will wince at nothing, but who with our ex-Presi- dent Roosevelt, will wield the big stick till there is trembling even in the seats of the mighty. And now as we leave the last year’s dwelling for the new we greet you again, dear friends, and sincerely hope that this hour for which we have striven so long shall not be in vain, and that we have your best wish- es for our ultimate success.