They were fellow students she'd see all the time in the hallways or cafeteria at Lampeter-Strasburg High School, Kelsey Dewar recalled.

They were students raising money for people they didn't know, people struck by a calamity far away, and her classmates were "trying to make their life a little more bearable," she said.

Her Class of 2010 has excelled in kindness and countless other ways, she added, and maybe you'll hear of them again — maybe as part of the generation that fixes the economy, cures cancer and AIDS, even walks on Mars.

The 269 members of the Lampeter-Strasburg graduating class ended their high school careers Friday night with a bang — and by heaving their mortarboards up into the beautiful sky.

"We set athletic records, won awards ... we will surpass expectations and live up to our full potential," declared Chelsey Ott, like Dewar a speaker during Friday's commencement ceremony in a full Pioneer Stadium.

"We should aspire to greatness, because we do, indeed, have the potential," said Ott, who was named class salutatorian during the ceremony.

"And while we won't all become CEOs, presidents or astronauts, we will, most assuredly, be great."

The class was one of the largest ever at L-S, which held its 57th annual commencement Friday.

More than half of the students plan to go to a four-year college, 11 percent to a two-year school and another 4 percent are entering the armed forces, L-S Principal Carroll Staub said.

Noting that nearly all graduates some day won't remember who their graduation speaker even was or what they said, Staub made sure that didn't happen to his 2010 class.

When you started at L-S, he told them as some parents chuckled, "words like 'buff,' 'ripped' and 'slapped together' were words that were being used to describe me," the principal said.

"OK, so none of that was true, of course."

But something else is true, he said to the graduates seated before him: "You've been a part of something very special for these last four years ... as much as we've given you, we know that you have returned it tenfold, probably without even realizing it."

Chad Frey, who Staub called "an exceptional, unassuming young man" and a four-year member of the honor roll and the football and lacrosse teams, was named class valedictorian for having the top grade-point average.

Another speaker, graduating senior Brittany Horn, exhorted her classmates to "get off to a running start, and never slow down.

"But promise me this ... never give up. And never stop writing your story."

Some of the graduates might have been at the only L-S commencement ceremony they'll ever attend, so they got some excellent advice from a man who was at his 44th on Friday night.

The best people seem to be those who are "enthusiastic about whatever they're doing," Superintendent Robert Frick told them. "Age is a reflection of your attitude more than the time you've been on this earth."

He then quoted Bob Dylan's "Forever Young."

The veteran superintendent then smiled and said, "Class of 2010, may you stay forever young ... and may God speed you along the way."

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