Dear Class of 2020,

Our ride has never been easy. 

This is just another step on our path to greatness. We have endured the polar vortex, the several floods including the ones that stole our favorite summer spot and our homecoming, and now the Coronavirus. We attended football games in 90-degree weather, snow, sleet, and rain. We watched our teams compete at so many state events, including seeing our own seven senior boys become two-time class 2A wrestling team champs. 

Right now it feels as though this epidemic of COVID-19 has stolen everything, but it hasn’t. 

It can’t take away the last three and a half years of high school memories or even the last 13 years of memories. We will always have the cringy middle school dances, the girls chasing the boys at recess in elementary, and TPing everyone (including Felderdad…) for homecoming. This is not our end. We are forever tied to each other because we are the class of 2020, the ones with the greatest senior skip day. 

Take this as a blessing. Yes we may not get our final senior moments like prom or a senior walkthrough, but there also won’t be any hot days in the classrooms. 

West Delaware Hawks are not those who back down. Our journey may feel over, but it is really just beginning. To COVID-19, you cannot hurt us. We will let you take our graduation, our senior prom, and our last days at West Delaware High School. We are not through, because once a Hawk—always a Hawk.

And lastly, to our successors, the classes of 2021, 2022, and 2023. Learn from us. Take every moment of your life, in the rest of your time as high schoolers, and of the moments with your friends. Cherish them. It’s a big, scary world out there that can throw anything and everything at us . . . and it has. Be you. Kick butt in sports, earn good grades, spend time with not just your friends but your family and just breathe.

High school is not the end. It just makes us who we are. It gives us four years of countless memories with amazing friends to look back at in twenty or thirty years when we’re old and have our own children starting their journey. Embrace whatever is thrown at you in stride and have a good time along the way.

It has been real, West Delaware. It really has. But it’s time for me to sign off as we have come to the end of this chapter. I can never thank you enough for the relationships, memories and life lessons you have taught me. See ya later.

Sincerely,

Isabelle Willey.