As ConVal High School inducted its 40th graduating class beneath a cloudless sky on Saturday, it also said goodbye to its leader of 16 years, Principal Susan Dell.

The school handed out 226 diplomas, 29 community education diplomas and five certificates of attendance. In total, 250 of 260 graduates marched across the stage to shake hands with School Board Chairman Craig Hicks, hug Dell and begin their lives as ConVal graduates.

Tassels spun on brisk, warm winds in ConVal’s athletic fields as Dell delivered her 16th and last graduation speech. Her chief obstacle in crafting the speech, she said, was to bridge the space between her goodbye and that of her students. In commemorating one of the most iconic departures of her students’ lives, Dell offered personal stories to illustrate farewells from the common to the extraordinary.

Some goodbyes, said Dell, are no more difficult than tossing a Frisbee. Family members toss them about while “consumed with packing lunches, checking backpacks, picking out clothes and watching the clock.” In a blink, graduation day arrives and signals the end of the familiar daily routine.

Dell recalled her oldest daughter’s graduation, a day that couldn’t come fast enough for young Alli at the time. Even Dell admitted to feeling some relief at the prospect since her daughter “did such a good job of letting us know how tiresome we all were during her senior year.”

“Then I realized the goodbye I was facing was not a throwaway word as I rushed out the door,” said Dell. “This goodbye was a realization that our family life would not be the same again. ... This is where you and your families are today. ... As goodbyes go, this is the most frightening kind.”

Brian Stinson, father of Salutatorian Jordan Stinson, fought tears as he echoed Dell’s anxiety.

“It’s going to be different without him in the house,” said Stinson. “He’s changed so much in the last four years, and it’s thanks to his teachers and friends at ConVal. He always had a knack for trying to understand what was around him, and he developed an understanding that was beyond his years. He’s just comfortable with himself and that’s because of ConVal.”

In addition to the pending goodbyes as graduates leave their nests for college or employment, Valedictorian Emily Eng highlighted the goodbyes her fellow graduates must say to one another.

“We have walked alongside one another for four years, yet the diversity of our journeys has separated us. We have become individuals, unique in our passions, our thoughts, our dreams,” said Eng. “There are thousands of moments we have not shared with each other, but today, for a few hours, a ceremony brings us together. Here, we are all equal.”

Eng encouraged her fellow graduates to seek out their passions and pursue delight. She received this advice not from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a writer Eng said she adores, but another well-known model of good character.

“Mr. Rogers once said, ‘The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing,’” said Eng. “We are all capable of loving what we do.”

At the end of her professional career, Dell said she has loved her job, treasured her staff, valued her communities and cherished her students. With a handshake, bear hug or smile at the graduation podium, she has offered thousands of goodbyes to graduates over the years. Other goodbyes, such as those Dell has extended to 15 students who have died during her time at the high school, are less fleeting.

“From any perspective, finding the good in these losses seems impossible, and perhaps it is,” said Dell. “As goodbyes go, this is the most challenging kind.”

Also challenging, but infinitely more joyful, was the goodbye at hand for seniors on Saturday. In welcoming her last batch of graduates to “independence from curfews, responsibility for your spending, innumerable work and study opportunities and the chance to create and follow your dreams,” Dell chose to emphasize the first syllable of goodbye.

“As goodbyes go, this is as good as it gets,” said Dell.

This year’s faculty award for the senior who “best represents, in practice and intent, spirit, unselfishness, service, leadership, and accomplishment,” went to Baxter Cohen. Retiring music teacher Ray Sweeney presented the award, noting Cohen’s athletic prowess, sportsmanship, altruism and academic accomplishments. According to Sweeney, one teacher recommended Cohen because of his college application essay, which referenced the teacher’s tearful story of the loss of a friend in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“About three weeks later, [Cohen] wrote his college essay about why he didn’t stand up and help his teacher in her time of pain,” said Sweeney. “When she read his essay in class, it made her cry again, and this time he did indeed get up and give her a hug. ... He is just a great kid.”

In a speech co-written and co-delivered with fellow Salutatorian Greylin Nielsen, Jordan Stinson framed his farewell on a poem he and Nielsen analyzed in Jill Lawler’s senior English class just weeks prior. David Waggoner’s poem “Breaking Camp” is a rich metaphor for the art and purpose of goodbyes. In the context of high school graduation, it paints the student as a weary but steadfast hiker, one who is given only the briefest of moments to reflect upon the trail behind him before setting out for new summits.

Expanding the metaphor, Nielsen said she appreciated the first time she cut her thumb while dragging her knife across a flint. She reflected on the first moment she created fire and the tools and resources that have gradually accumulated in her backpack.

“My hands struggle to grasp the stakes that have, until now, held my tent fast. It is difficult to force myself to move on, to let go of that which I know is safe,” said Nielsen. “Comfortable haven becomes natural world again, and I hate the change. Change is scary, difficult to accept, but it is part of life. It must happen. We are not made to settle, we are meant to move, to explore, to live.”

Stinson encouraged himself and his fellow graduates to bid a reverent farewell to the camp they’ve called home, and advised them to embrace the coming trek.

“I tighten the frayed straps of my heavy pack and turn,” said Stinson. “I turn away from my youth, my past, and my innocence, as I turn towards adulthood, independence, and the warm sun rising over the mountains. ... We are ready to leave behind our camp. We are ready for the journey. We are the Class of 2010 and we are ready for life!”

Thirty years after he broke from the ConVal camp, alumnus Bert Broderick was there to watch his son, Aaron, become a graduate.

“It’s great. It’s like a sweet homecoming,” said Bert. “Bittersweet, if you will.”

Aaron seconded his father’s mixed feelings.

“It was a good experience, but I’m glad it’s over,” said Aaron.

Graduate Krystal Koban, 18, of Antrim, was still trying to wrap her mind around that idea.

“I’m excited,” she said. “You learn to forget that you’re actually going to graduate then it suddenly happens. It’s surreal.”