On a somber Friday morning, as Castlemont seniors lined up at the Paramount Theatre in purple and white graduation regalia, some of Marvin Boomer’s former students and colleagues gathered at the campus, trying to keep busy.
Poisonous hemlock needed to be weeded from the campus farm. Canopies and workstations for the Fab Lab’s summer projects had to be set up. Classrooms had to be tidied, student work taken down from the walls, bulletin boards cleared for the summer.
“What seems fitting is to put your hands in the soil,” Brandi Mack, a Castlemont alumnus and volunteer at the school farm, said while taking a break from pulling up hemlock. “I’m just grateful to know people like him exist on the planet and that he was here. He showed up, and that’s what I appreciate.”…