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WACO’s Class of 2025 urged to climb with conviction
Waco’s Class of 2025 officially walked the stage Saturday evening
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
WAYLAND — As the sun dipped behind the tree line Saturday, May 17, the chill of early summer crept across the WACO football field. The breeze that had whipped through Wayland earlier in the day settled, replaced by stillness — the kind that hangs in the air when something important is about to end.
But for the Class of 2025, the message at their graduation ceremony wasn’t about endings. It was about beginnings — and the work it takes to rise.
“Everybody wants the view, but nobody wants to climb,” said WACO Superintendent Ken Crawford as he welcomed families and graduates to the ceremony. “Dreams without effort — that’s just called wishing.”
It was more than advice. It was a thesis statement for the evening.
The class’s own speaker, Tanner Egli, stood next and delivered a raw and unsparing portrait of the group he’s grown up with since kindergarten.
“Well guys, we made it,” he began. “About time, right?”
He didn’t waste time on nostalgia, instead focusing on what made the class of 2025 unforgettable — not just to each other, but to their teachers.
“If I had to define the one thing that truly united us … we are all, in our own unique way, relentlessly stubborn,” Egli said. “Not in the noble, quiet martyr kind of way. No — our stubbornness is more unbothered. It’s the ‘I know I’m wrong, but I’ve already committed to this argument’ kind.”
He offered example after example: writing essays to prove teachers wrong, turning eighth-grade science class into a courtroom, and “decorating an entire hallway to resemble a horror movie — just to spite Mr. Mohrman.”
“Some people called that defiance,” he said. “We called it Thursday.”
But Egli pressed deeper.
“We weren’t just difficult for sport,” he said. “We only fought when we cared.” That passion, he argued, was what set the class apart — and what they must hold on to as they head into a world that will try to trade their fire for comfort.
“Apathy is sneaky,” Egli warned. “It wears sweatpants and calls itself realistic … It convinces you to scroll instead of act, to shrug instead of feel, to give up quietly and call it maturity.”
His closing challenge to his classmates was not to fade. “Go stubborn,” he said. “Let it be a stubbornness that seeks meaning.”
Faculty speaker Brad Shettler, known to many students as “Bradford,” followed with his own look back — a winding, heartfelt, and at times hilarious tribute. He recalled student quirks and memories with precision, conducting an impromptu roll call through years of shared classroom history.
“You are now your own gatekeeper,” Shettler told them, reminding the graduates that choices made now — even small ones — matter. “Make decisions that you can live with.”
His address spanned everything from drawing flowers on whiteboards to COVID quarantine protocols and dry sarcasm about modern phones. But behind his anecdotes lay a deeper truth: life will offer challenges, and how you show up for them will define you.
One of the ceremony’s most profound moments came during the induction of Jan Boshart Shelman to the WACO Wall of Fame. A 1980 graduate who spent 38 years working in social services, Shelman used her address to redefine success — not in terms of wealth or recognition, but through perseverance, care, and impact.
“Success comes in many different forms,” she said. “It wears many different faces.”
She offered her own examples: being the first in a family to graduate high school or college, breaking a cycle of poverty or abuse, overcoming addiction, working off an IEP that followed you since elementary school, or raising siblings to keep them out of foster care.
“These may not fit the cultural norm,” she said, “but in my world, they define success.”
She also reminded students that what they gain in life is only half the story.
“We make a living by what we get,” she said, quoting Winston Churchill. “But we make a life by what we give.”
Shelman’s three lessons to the Class of 2025 were simple: find a mentor, be a mentor, and make the world better than you found it.
“This world owes you nothing,” she said. “But you owe it your care.”
As the ceremony neared its close, the graduates joined their families on the field for a senior tribute video — baby pictures set to music. There were soft laughs and silent tears. It was a moment of stillness, of recognition. Of seeing how far they’d come.
Then, the final act: moving the tassel.
It happened quietly — no confetti, no theatrics. Just the symbolic shift from right to left. Childhood to adulthood. One climb finished. The next beginning.
The tree line was dark now. The last of the light slipping beneath it. But the message had already taken root. The sun may have set on their high school years. But as Egli reminded them, the world still waits — and it doesn’t need passivity. It needs fire, passion, stubbornness, and care.
So they turned their tassels. And they got ready to climb.
Comments: AnnaMarie.Kruse@southeastiowaunion.com
