Emily Jennings remembered pretty vividly her first day of school.

Wearing her Easter dress and little backpack, she recalled waiting for the bus anxiously. Speaking to her fellow Freeport High School graduates, class secretary Jennings noted how, years later, the friends she would make in those early years were with her on Merrill Auditorium’s stage Saturday in Portland.

More friends, Jennings said, were made four years ago when students from Durham and Pownal joined together with Freeport when Regional School Unit 5 formed.

Now, the town of Freeport is in the process of extricating itself from RSU 5. Freeport High School is the only high school in the district, and it remains to be seen whether Pownal and Durham students will return to FHS on a tuition basis, or opt for schools elsewhere.

Student speakers at Saturday’s graduation reflected on four years that included new relationships between Freeport, Pownal and Durham students.

In his senior address, graduating student Adam Brobst spoke about the first time he entered Freeport High School “four long years ago.”

“I was terrified,” he said, reflecting on what was then a new school and a class adviser he was already frightened of. “After all of that, we found out the year before that we’d be combined with two other schools, Durham and Pownal. And that was another daunting task for a group of people that had known each other forever.”

Brobst noted how Freeport students in his class never had the opportunity to previously bond with their Durham and Pownal counterparts.

“We were a bunch of freshmen who had been tossed together like a mixed green salad,” Brobst said. “This, to me, is what makes the Class of 2014 so special. … We made our friendships and our bonds within the classrooms.”

Brobst noted how, on Spirit Days, Class of 2014 was always the most competitive, loudest and “always united.”

Keynote speech

It was the class’s school pride and spirit Thomas Edwards, a past Freeport High School principal, touched upon in his keynote address. Edwards said he came to Freeport in 1996 in a time of turmoil when staff had resigned in protest.

“As I talked to students, a theme emerged: ‘We want to have more school pride, and more school spirit at FHS,’” said Edwards.

The Class of 2014, he said, had plenty of spirit, which he learned of through discussions with the graduates.

“I’ve worked at schools for almost 50 years,” Edwards said. “And this is the most positive set of affirmations from a school I have ever encountered.”

Edwards put the school spirit of both graduates and the audience to the test, leading everyone in cheers of “Go ’14! Go ’14! Yeah!” that shook the rafters of Merrill Auditorium.

jswinconeck@timesrecord.com