Good morning to everyone gathered here today! For the family and friends who do not know me, my name is Caroline Gallagher, and I am so honored to be speaking to you all. I am going to start by talking about the foundation of our education here at Stone Ridge: the five Goals of the Sacred Heart. They are as follows: a personal and active faith in God, a deep respect for intellectual values, a social awareness that impels to action, the building of community as a Christian value, and finally, personal growth in an atmosphere of wise freedom. The mission of any Sacred Heart School is to make sure its students try their best to fulfill these Goals in their time at school, and later in life.

“The centennial class is particularly marked with resilience, immense school spirit, and genuine love for the School and each other.”

But can the unique circumstances and accomplishments of the centennial class be confined to these five Goals? While the Goals provide an eloquent framework for success, I think that our class has gone far above and beyond what they articulate. In fact, I don’t even have time to list the ways in which we exceeded all five Goals. So I am just going to focus on my favorite one, the one that I feel most closley relates to the exceptional spirit of our class—Goal IV. Goal IV is the building of “community,” which, in my opinion, is not an expressive enough term to describe what our class has built. We have not just formed a community, but have created tight-knit friendships and bonds that I honestly think will last lifetimes. The centennial class is particularly marked with resilience, immense school spirit, and genuine love for the School and each other. After we had endured the distractions of our lives at home and the difficulties provided by online school, our class was determined to make the most out of our junior and senior years, and I believe that is when we truly started to become more than just classmates. The school spirit of our class leaders is infectious, and whether you were falling off the diving board and getting disqualified, like myself, or winning the ISL championship for the first time in history, like our lacrosse team, you would always see friends and classmates cheering you on in the stands. 

The most notable way in which the Class of 2023 has surpassed the conditions of Goal IV was through the spirit of gratitude that we possess. In fact, I have a theory that the most used phrase at Stone Ridge from 2019–2023 has been “thank you.” After every single class, no matter how intriguing or filled with monotonous note taking, my classmates and I always said thank you to our teachers. If you do the math, it tops out at around 175,000 “thank yous.” In this spirit of gratitude that is so definitive of our community, I would like to tack on a few more “thank yous,” this morning.

Firstly, thank you to Mrs. Karrels, Mr. McCluskey, Dr. Downey-Vanover, Ms. Diaz, and Ms. Curry. You all have put in so much work, not only to give us an amazing education, but to make our time here special, and we all truly appreciate that.Thank you, to our class leaders—Iliana, Julia, Olivia, and Ebony, for your enthusiasm, endless brokering of senior privileges (especially out to lunch), and all of the hard work you put in to make our senior year special. You guys definitely succeeded. Thank you, to all of the Upper School teachers for your passion and care. One of the things I love about Stone Ridge are the student-teacher relationships. I have always felt your dedication to our success, and I am incredibly appreciative of that. I am particularly grateful to Mr. Ishikawa, for all of the hard work you put into teaching us math, but also for your fascinating stories and invaluable advice.

Thank you to the college office—Ms. Allen, Ms. Sweeney, and Mrs. Harkins. You all guided us through college admissions with kindness and enthusiasm. Your doors (and Ms. Sweeney’s couch) were always open for us to come in and talk about anything from editing our essays to picking out prom dresses, and we all truly appreciate that.

“The school spirit of our class leaders is infectious, and whether you were falling off the diving board and getting disqualified, like myself, or winning the ISL championship for the first time in history, like our lacrosse team, you would always see friends and classmates cheering you on in the stands.”

Thank you to all of the family and friends gathered here, for showing up and presumably stressing out over the first come first serve seating. To my mom and my dad, thank you for funding many of my morning Starbucks runs, but much more importantly, for your truly endless support. I love you both so much and I couldn’t ask for anything more. To my little brothers, Cian and Colin, thank you for helping me de-stress with your humor and kindness. Your support helped me more than you will ever realize, and I am so grateful that you didn’t wear Jordans to Très Bien.

Finally, thank you to the people we are all celebrating, the Class of 2023. I truly loved coming to school because of you. I can point back to the exact moment in which I realized just how much I would miss you all, and it was unfortunately on the last day of school. We were all packed into the senior lounge, having been released from our last classes ever. It was around 80 or 90 people in a small classroom, and people were squished together, but everyone was happy, either talking or singing along to the music provided by the beloved disco speaker. Charlotte suggested that we take a picture, since we all just happened to be there. The photo wasn’t planned or organized for Instagram, and yet everyone was in it. It was a candid expression of the friendships that our class had formed. That picture made me realize just how special the love our class has for each other is, and I don’t think I will experience anything like it again. So thank you to the sophomore who we forced to take that picture, and thank you to the Class of 2023 for making this celebration so bittersweet. Go Gators! ❤