High school students all over Michigan are dealing with the loss of the final months of the school year, the seniors are missing a chance to go out together.
“There is no really closure," Connor Rigterink, a senior at Grandville High School, said. "I didn’t get to say goodbye to friends and won’t probably for a few more months before this all passes over.”
So many of those that will miss out on the end of their senior year entered the world at an uncertain time, right around September 11th, 2001.
“My graduating class of 2020 is really the first graduating class that knows nothing but post 9-11," Rigterink added. "We never experienced anything besides this complete and national security and now that we are older and maturing and getting ready to graduate history is kind of repeating itself.”
Rigterink was born just eleven days before the towers went down, his mom has some advice for parents now.
“The things that are unknown are always the things that are the scariest," Connor's mom Chanell Rigterink said. "So to allow them the space to be scared and to be reassuring and to let them know that as a family, and bigger than that as a community, we will figure it out.”
While Connor is disappointed, he is keeping things in perspective.
“So just be happy for what you have instead of feeling sad about you missed," Conner said. "Obviously you are going to feel sad and that was a big journey for me. We just need to get through day-by-day and eventually this will all come to pass.”