Sea Kings for this day and more to come

Marisa O’Neil

Like academic prisoners awaiting their release, Corona del Mar High

School’s class of 2004 stood, fenced in on the campus’s tennis

courts, awaiting their cue.

They straightened their caps, fiddled with their tassels and spoke

among themselves. Friends and loved ones came to the chain-link

fence, hanging on to the wire and looking for their favorite grad.

Neena Dolwani, 18, came to the edge of the court and talked to a

half-dozen of her friends on the other side of the fence. They’d come

from her old school in Rancho Cucamonga to see her big moment.

Another penned-up senior, Claudia Mendoza, 17, said she was excited but sad to graduate. She equated her milestone to a chapter

in a book.

“I finished reading one chapter today,” she said. “Tomorrow I

start a new one.”

Along with the requisite cap and gown, 17-year-old Eric Mirowitz

wore black Ray Ban sunglasses with bright fuchsia arms. They’re left

over from the 1980s, he explained.

“I’m not going to wear them when I walk,” he said. “Should I?”

Out on the school’s athletic field, supporters found their way to

their seats as music blared from large speakers. Three women sat in

the back row with a giant bunch of blue and white balloons.

Three 2003 Newport Harbor High graduates came to cheer on their

best friend, Bryan White.

“We tried to get balloons that said: ‘It’s a Boy,’ but they were

out,” 19-year-old Danielle Lyons said. “We want to be as embarrassing

as possible.”

Andrea Savopolos, one of the student speakers at the graduation,

had her own cheering section. Nearly 40 friends and family members

gathered, some from as far away as Connecticut, to cheer her on and

blow bubbles that her mother brought.

“I’m really happy right now,” Audrey Savopolos said. “But when we

take her up to her dorm at UCLA, I’ll cry.”

During the commencement, Andrea Savopolos and senior Evan Hirsch

read a poem about happiness and how to find it.

“We go to school for happiness,” Hirsch read. “Maybe not immediate

happiness but happiness after we graduate. And so our parents don’t

yell at us.”

Student speaker Aaron Israel used a book analogy to describe the

graduates’ next steps. The page they turn by graduating, he said,

will be blank, waiting for the rest of the story of their lives.

At the end of the ceremony, the ukulele-tinged sounds of a

Hawaiian version of “What a Wonderful World” flowed from the

speakers, and white doves were released. As the doves circled, the

graduates tossed their caps high in the air, ready to write that next

chapter.