Reflections/Jonathan Gramling
So Much to Say
I can’t believe that the 2026 Hues Graduation issue is almost set to go to the printer. It’s Sunday night and I have four more articles to write. While it’s a lot, it’s not as much as it seems because I have transcribed the interviews and I know what the articles will be about. But it is always a panic meeting a drop-dead deadline.
I can’t believe it is graduation week for many of the Madison area’s high schools. I started working on this special issue the first week of April and two months later, it’s almost ready to be printed and distributed. While I had three regular issues of The Hues to publish in the meanwhile and a lot of financial work to do, the constant focus on the graduation issue has made like go by pretty quickly, just as life seems to go by pretty quickly. I’ve been to so many events, I haven’t been able to keep track of them all. And you run into people and think, ‘When did they grow up to be an adult? Or ‘My aren’t we all starting to show our age.’ It’s like seeing the cycle of life up close and at full throttle.
While it isn’t perfect, I view The Hues Graduation issue as a community celebration. I received lists of students to profile from UW-Madison, specifically the PEOPLE Program, Edgewood University and Edgewood College. It was such an amazing coincidence this year that a graduate from Madison College and one from Edgewood University were both from Honduras and knew each other in passing. That has never happened before. I thank Goodson Vue from PEOPLE, Dr. Jimmy Cheffin Jr. from Madison College and Richard Sims and Alex Okelue from Edgewood University for the referrals.
And The Hues Row of Excellence is even more of a community collaboration. It wouldn’t be possible to reach the students — or the vast majority of them — without the staff at each school. I am so grateful to them. They are — I pray to God that I don’t miss anyone — going west to east, Shawn Harris from Verona Area, Gust Athanas from Middleton, Mariah Ortega Flowers and Tatiana Smith from Vel Phillips Memorial, Alicia Grant from Madison West, Boyce Hodge from Edgewood, Silvia de Gomez and Cory Foster from Madison East, Jack Jackson from Monona Grove, John Milton and Lydia Retkowski from La Follette, Ann Ash from Stoughton, Jamie Bean from Sun Prairie West and Sarah Albright from Sun Prairie East. They have been a great group of educators to work with. The Hues Row of Excellence would not exist without them. I thank them for believing in the project.
And then there are the Divine Nine fraternities and sororities and Women in Focus who do incredible work raising money for scholarships for graduating high school seniors as well as some continuing college students. They make such a wonderful impact on the academic lives of students of color and beyond. I am sure that they do make a difference in some of the students going to college or not. This is not a one and done effort on the part of these organizations. They have been doing this for decades. Their commitment to our youth is inspiring. And I am honored that they grace the pages of The Hues with their announcements of the scholarship recipients.
And then there are the special graduation celebrations that occurred starting May 1st. There have been the UW-Madison PEOPLE Program, the UW-Madison CeO Program, and the UW-Madison ITA Program, which I was not able to make. There was also the All-City American Indian and Alaska Native Graduation celebration as well as the African Graduation Celebration. I love to attend these celebrations whenever I can. This is such an expression of the importance that communities of color place on education.
This issue is a work of love. I don’t get paid anything extra and the papers loses a little money due to the big printing bill we receive. But it is all worth it.
I know this issue is important to the people who are featured. I had been working with a woman from University Continuing Studies on advertising who was laid off at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. As we were saying good-bye, she mentioned that she was a member of 2007 Hues Row of Excellence from Madison East. She said she really appreciated being recognized because no one else had recognized the hard work put in and the barriers overcome that confront many students of color. I sent her her photo from the 2007 class.
A few of the students in The Hues Row of Excellence are special ed students who put forth incredible effort to learn. The mother of one student told me that she posted it on their refrigerator because The Row was the first time that anyone even acknowledged that her son was alive.
And Samuel Cann — who is one of the graduates on our cover —and I have crossed paths several times over the past 10-15 years through Africa Fest, The Hues Row of Excellence and the UW-Madison PEOPLE Program. It’s always so cool to witness the cycle of life up close and personal. I am proud of Samuel.
I hope everyone will join me in congratulating the graduates who appear in this issue as well as all graduates whom you cross paths with. They have worked hard. They deserve a pat on the back. And they are our future. We are in good hands!