With graduation right around the corner and the 2024 commencement speaker announcement for MCPS schools coming soon, we thought we would take a look back twenty years at some of the speakers for the class of 2004.
Commencement speakers included public officials, scientists, business leaders, journalists, students, educators, and sports figures. Among the participants were two college presidents: Dr. C.D. Mote, University of Maryland (Paint Branch High School), and Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Wheaton High School). The University of Maryland also is represented by football coach Ralph Friedgen, who spoke at Sherwood High School.
Journalists and Authors: Journalists and authors were particularly popular choices as commencement speakers in 2004. They included David Halberstam (Watkins Mill High School), Catherine Hughes (Quince Orchard High School), Tom Kurkjian (Rock Terrace School), Lesli Foster (Walter Johnson High School), Joe Krebs (James Hubert Blake High School), Juan Williams (Winston Churchill High School), Ron Suskind (Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School), Leon Harris (Alternative Programs), and James Brown (Northwest High School).
Teachers: A number of teachers were also asked to be commencement speakers by the graduating class at their school. They included Fred Swick, physical education teacher at Poolesville High School; Robert Handler, retired social studies teacher at Col. Zadok Magruder High School; Margaret Penn, retired world studies teacher at Gaithersburg High School; and Adam Graham, English teacher at Springbrook High School.
Graduates and Current Students: Speakers who are MCPS graduates include Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes, who spoke at Damascus High School, and Marcus Johnson, founder of Three Keys Music Company, spoke at his alma mater, Montgomery Blair High School. Rockville High School alumni and recent college graduates, Sarah Srivastava and Michael Gualtieri, gave the commencement addresses at their former high school. Two current students gave commencement addresses: Adriana Friedman at Longview School and Felicia Jackson at Mark Twain School.
Other speakers included former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (Albert Einstein High School), Congressman Albert Wynn (John F. Kennedy High School), parent educator Billie Stephenson (Stephen Knolls School), and J. W. Marriott, grandfather of a graduating senior at Walt Whitman High School. Dr. Claire Frasier, president of the Institute for Genomic Research, addressed graduates at Richard Montgomery High School, and Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the American Federation of Labor, spoke to the Thomas S. Wootton High School graduates. Marina Harrison, Miss Maryland, spoke at Seneca Valley High School. Cryptologist Diego Reyes addressed students at RICA.