JEFFERSON COUNTY — A less-than-inspiring graduation address certainly is not news. But the crowd at this year’s Dakota Ridge graduation turned on the speaker, a Jefferson County Board of Education member, in an unusual way: booing, laughing, jeering and trying to drown her out with air horns.
Paula Noonan plugged along, either oblivious to or in defiance of the catcalls and shouts.
The audience’s reaction was brutal. So too, some say, was her speech.
“It was just going and going and going,” parent Janice Holmes said. “It was a train wreck.”
In a letter of complaint to school leaders, parent Cindy Grassi described the speech as “a rambling, self-absorbed discourse that confused and embarrassed graduates and their families.”
Noonan’s remarks at the May 27 graduation ceremony at Comfort Dental Amphitheatre touched on her love of swimming, a student’s choice of footwear, her father’s footwear at her graduation, a comparison of her life at graduation and her life today, her grandmother’s life story and an inspiring phrase imparted by her grandmother.
Uncomfortable laughter was heard nearly from start to finish. School leaders seated behind Noonan appeared to squirm and whisper to one another. At one point, several people in the crowd tried to interrupt the speech with air horns.
