Two students wounded in a shooting rampage at their high school cafeteria were cheered by classmates Saturday as they received their diplomas at an upbeat graduation ceremony.
Nathan Cole, 18, who was hit seven times in the May 21 shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, smiled and walked slowly across the stage.Minutes later Trina Harty walked across with a limp from the wound she suffered in her left calf.
"We love you, Trina!" someone yelled as the smiling Harty was handed her diploma.
They were among 292 graduates who received diplomas from the school where Kip Kinkel, 15, is accused of killing two classmates after having shot his parents to death a day earlier.
Wearing the school's colors, men in black and women in red, the graduates gave each other "high fives" as they took their seats on the stage. Several times during the ceremony the graduates did "the wave" and a beach ball was spotted bouncing among the crowd.
But two weeks after the shootings, the bloody images remained in the minds of many of the 2,400 relatives and friends who attended the ceremony at a hall in Eugene.
Kristin Gauthier, one of the valedictorians, had crawled out the cafeteria doors as the bullets flew on that day.
"We're trying to get excited for graduation," she said before the ceremony, "but this thing has happened. This terrible thing."
More than 20 students were wounded and one remains in critical condition.
People in the audience dabbed their eyes Saturday as Thurston's choir sang "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" and "Oh, Happy Day."
Language instructor Paul Halupa, who gave the commencement address, acknowledged the pain and suffering caused by the shootings.
"In a patched cafeteria and a flowered fence we learned things. In our crisis we learned to love," he said.
Students interviewed afterward said they thought the event had struck the right note.
Randy Gilbert, 18, planning to become a police officer, said, "It was a happy occasion. I think we have pretty much moved beyond all of the grief."