Page 8 - Priorities 5

Graduation 1997:
“Always We Begin Again...”
Under the blue skies of Church Square, the Class of 1997 Commencement Exercises began with this Benedictine philosophy, the opening remark of Father William Sullivan’s keynote address. It ended with his Irish blessing, “Until we meet again, may God keep you in the palm of his hand.”
Valedictorian
Mark Patrick Lewis
Mark Lewis is the son of Dr. David Lewis, WPS Class of 1966. Mark began his valedictory address by saying that, when he was small, his grandmother would tell him, “Now, Marko, if you behave and work really hard in school, someday you will be able to go to the Priory.” Following are excerpts from his speech.
In addition to learning to conjugate the verb “to be” in Latin, we’ve been taught to focus our interests upon something — be it medicine, law, business, teaching, the priesthood, or whatever — and never to lose sight of the satisfaction we will feel
by doing what we truly love to do. We are 30 different people with one common goal — to search for our call, and once found, to grab it and never let it go.
The Priory has given us the skills we need to identify and reach our goals. Now is our chance to truly “make something of ourselves.” And so I say thank you to those who prepared me for this next segment of my life. Thank you, Father Maurus, for teaching me what a “vocation” really is. Thank you, Father Egon and the other founders of the Priory, for establishing my school. Thank you, grandma, for making sure that I attended the Priory, and thank you, God, for giving me the chance to come to this realization.
Class of 1997
Ryohei Akiyama University of Utah
Brooke Marie Appelblom Loras College
Ramiro Arredondo University of California, Berkeley
Brianne Layne Baker Claremont McKenna College
Brooke April Barry College of San Mateo
Seok-Min (Thomas) Choi University of Minnesota
Dae Hyun Chung University of Wisconsin
Brook Philip Compton Ripon College
Gregory Michael Fleishman California State University, Chico Peter Gacs Returning to Europe
Victoria Jane Groom Stanford University
Nicola Catherine Hancock Loyola Marymount University Kristin Hepper University of California, Davis
John Mahlon Hubenthal Universityof California, Santa Barbara Dae-Woo (Shawn) Joo University of California, Irvine
Stephen John Klimowski California State University
Ian Robert Kotchian University of California San Diego
Jay Joon Hoon Lee University of California, Irvine
Young Bae Lee University of California, San Diego
Mark Patrick Lewis Duke University
Lambert Hing Leung Lui University of San Francisco Maximillian Hing Kit Lui Johns Hopkins University
Nellie Hazel Maldonado College of Notre Dame
Jeffrey James Miller Canada College
Maribeth Ann Reyes University of California, Santa Barbara George Sarkisov University of San Francisco
Kayla Beth Shaltz University of California, Santa Cruz
Brian John Sullivan Northwestern University
Christopher John Upjohn University of California, San Diego Geoffrey Vincent Welliver Diablo Valley College