Aug. 27, 2015, at a ribbon-cutting for Wiscasset Middle School’s return to being Wiscasset Elementary, Damon Lincoln, 9, of Wiscasset told me he was a little nervous about going to a different school. “But mostly excited,” the incoming fourth grader said.

I reported in that story: “Lincoln and some of his siblings were part of Wiscasset Primary School’s last classes, now the new students at the newly renamed Wiscasset Elementary School.”

Wiscasset High School became Wiscasset Middle High School. Wiscasset had joined, then left Regional School Unit 12, become independent again and consolidated from three schools to two; and since then some residents have continued to ask if it should go down to one. We hope Wiscasset’s Future of the Schools Committee’s second report, whenever it is delivered, will help inform the discussion.

Thursday night, June 6, Damon Lincoln and fellow Class of 2024 members graduate from WMHS, at WMHS, where the ceremony returned last year after a few years at Wiscasset Speedway, initially due to the pandemic, and later by class choice. The 2021 graduation at the Speedway had some of this week’s graduates at it, to see their older siblings graduate then. Sadie Bassett, for one, was there as sister Alyssa graduated. I snapped their and parents Kelly and Charlie Bassett’s picture on their arrival. Sadie, then 15, was an incoming WMHS sophomore.

For another few years, Wiscasset’s graduates will continue to have been among those who, with help from family, the schools and community, were in school amid the consolidation that was a big issue and decision in town; and then, of all things, a virus of global proportions that made all the adults have to think quickly how to keep school going in some form, and all the kids have to adjust to the changes in education and, for quite a while, the way of life.

In that 2021 graduation story, I quoted then-WMHS Principal Charles Lomonte on the following, from his remarks in the ceremony. These words ring as true for the Class of 2024. He said: “These students found things. Amidst the darkness, they found the light. I am just so proud of that.”    We are proud of this year’s and all this generation’s classes for all the things we would proud of in any young people reaching this milestone, but also for getting getting there through changes locally and worldwide. There may be nothing they can’t handle.