Friday, June 13th (yes, Friday the 13th) the Mount Si High School Class of 2014 will enter Wildcat Stadium one last time as high school students. Parents and relatives will pack the stands, cameras in hand.
About 330 seniors will proudly enter the stadium, adorned in the traditional red graduation robes, hats secured, smiling proudly with their friends – and searching a sea of faces to find their family.
Emotions run strong. Moms and dads tear up as they look out onto that field, shooting back in time, re-living their senior taking those first steps, losing that first tooth, walking into kindergarten that first day.
Graduation day is like living the often truthful cliché: Time flies by.
These years, from birth to elementary, middle and high school, were all touched by innovation and history – like a breadcrumb path of memories, marking all that has happened and changed on the road to this momentous day.
Here’s a look at some things that happened along the way for the Mount Si High School Graduating Class of 2014…
They were:
- Born when Microsoft was the young king of wall street; Toy Story premiered with Buzz Lightyear and Woody changing the face of animation; you rented movies on VHS (not DVD or streaming) at the long-gone Blockbuster Video.
- Born as President Clinton was elected to a second a second term and the Monica Lewinsky scandal surfaced.
- Born to many families who moved to the Snoqualmie Valley when North Bend, not Snoqualmie, was building subdivisions and “cookie cutter” homes
- Born when cell phones were in their infancy
- Babies when Microsoft invested millions to save Apple, allowing Steve Jobs to create technology that would dominate their future teen years.
- Babies when the first DVD player hit the market for $1000; the first iMac computer launched
- Toddlers when Titanic was setting box office movie sales records and Princess Diana died
- Entering preschool when land was cleared and the first home was built on Snoqualmie Ridge
- Preschoolers when the Dot Com bubble burst and the Nisqually Earthquake hit
- Kindergarteners when the World Trade Centers fell; the hunt for Osama Bin Laden began; and Apple launched the iPod
- First graders when the Snoqualmie Valley School District passed its last capital construction bond that built two new schools where some were the first 4th graders and 7th graders to walk the halls of Cascade View ES and Twin Falls MS – and also built the stadium where they now stand as graduates
- First graders when the Iraq War began and 10th graders when it ended
- 2nd graders when Saddam Hussein was found in a hole in the ground; Friends ended its TV sitcom run; Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, launching social media; and Harry Potter and his magic ruled the library
- 3rd graders when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit the day after Christmas, killing 230,000 people
- Beginning 4th grade when Hurricane Katrina hit, devastating the Gulf Coast region
- 4th graders when Twitter was created and the first Tweet was sent
- Just finishing elementary school when the first iPhone hit the market and when Americans began sending and receiving more text messages per month than phone calls
- Middle schoolers when Apple launched the very first App Store, paving the way for their cell phones to “have an app for that” and creating the world of Instagram and Snap Chat
- 7th graders when the economy crashed; the U.S. banking system nearly collapsed; and the bottom fell out of the real estate market; the first U.S. African-American president was elected; a December snow storm pounded the Snoqualmie Valley and brought a white Christmas; the swine flu outbreak hit; Twilight and New Moon were the biggest selling books in the country and made vampires cool
- 8th graders when the iPad launched; when the seventh most deadly earthquake hit in Haiti; and the Deep Water Horizons oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, creating one of the largest oil spills in history
- Freshmen when Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan; a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the east coast of Japan, taking over 15,000 lives; and the U.S. military policy, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” was repealed
- Sophomores when Principal Belcher took the reigns of Mount Si High School; a January ice storm knocked out power to the Snoqualmie Valley for days; police officers and SWAT team members descended on Peter Keller’s bunker on Rattlesnake Ridge; and the world population crossed 7 billion
- Juniors when the school board voted to open a freshman campus; bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon; Edward Snowden squealed on the NSA
- Seniors when the Seahawks won the Superbowl; Snoqualmie Valley’s first freshman-only campus opened in the former Snoqualmie Middle School building; a natural gas explosion rocked North Bend; and Snoqualmie Police officers began patrolling North Bend streets
They are great kids shaped by technology; loved by parents; good friends with big hearts; survivors; and forever connected to the Snoqualmie Valley – their home. Congratulations Mount Si High School Class of 2014!
