Old stomping grounds
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on May 25, 2018 5:50 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
First-graders Javius Herring, Durwin Baldwin and Theodore Lee read one another's handmade signs at North Drive Elementary Thursday as Goldsboro High School seniors walk the halls of their former schools.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Goldsboro High School seniors walk the halls, including Carver Heights Elementary, of their former schools during the second annual senior stroll on Thursday, the day before they graduate.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
First-graders at North Drive Elementary Zyheim Williams and Tarrianna Gaines hold up signs and cheer as Goldsboro High School seniors walk the halls of their former school during the second annual senior stroll on Thursday, the day before they graduate.
Tonight, the Goldsboro High School class of 2018 will walk across the stage for graduation, with eyes and minds fixed on the future.
Before that, however, the soon-to-be graduates paid a visit to some of the people in their past who helped them reach this moment, during the 2018 Goldsboro High Senior Stroll Thursday morning.
An annual tradition in Goldsboro inner city schools, the senior stroll is a chance for graduating GHS seniors to visit their old stomping grounds, walking through the halls of Dillard Middle, Carver Heights Elementary and North Drive Elementary, where many of them came up through the school system.
The graduates started in the morning around 9:30 at Dillard Middle, then moving to Carver Heights and finally North Drive. By the time they got to the last school, students in grades K-2 lined the halls holding cardboard signs congratulating the seniors on their accomplishments.
Several students sitting in a row held up letters which spelled "Congrats Class of 2018," and they cheered as the seniors filed in to the sound of a hip-hop version of Pomp and Circumstance played over the school intercom.
For second grade teacher Tabitha Johnson, seeing some of her former students walk the halls as graduates was an emotional experience.
"Some of them were waving at me, because they knew me from when I was a teacher at Dillard Middle," she said. "It makes me happy, because to see them walking is like 'we did it.'"
The seniors made a loop around part of the school's first floor, waving to old teachers and the students who will one day follow them as graduates. For some of the onlookers, the stroll was even more meaningful than they intended.
Cassandra Mills works as a foster grandparent at North Drive, and was at the school volunteering when the seniors walked in. As they walked past, she spotted a familiar face in the line -- her godson, who she did not expect to be walking in the stroll.
The happy surprise caught her off guard, and she walked away with tears in her eyes after the seniors passed.
"It's very emotional. He's a good boy but for a little while we weren't sure he was going to graduate, because he had some trouble," she said. "But he is graduating, because the devil didn't win. It means a lot."
Goldsboro High will hold its graduation ceremony for the class of 2018 at 6 p.m. tonight on the school's football field.