PENDLETON — This was graduation pandemic-style.

The Pendleton High School commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 30, seemed sort of familiar and wildly different all at the same time. The setting, the Pendleton Round-Up Arena, was the same. Senior Ashlee Zaugg sang the national anthem. Principal Melissa Sandven and class leaders spoke.

But, instead of sitting with their friends, Pendleton High School grads listened from their cars over radio. Extended family watched via a livestreaming broadcast.

The grads waited to drive into the rodeo arena. Each car or truck, most adorned with balloons and signs, held a lone graduate and his or her immediate family members. Some sat in chairs in the back of pickups or with their legs hanging from the back of hatchbacks.

Grads got out and walked a short distance to a platform set up by the bucking chutes and their families watched from a few yards away in vehicles. Cheers and sometimes confetti erupted as grads received their diplomas. To properly self-distance, Pendleton School District Board Chairman Gary George laid each diploma on a small table and the grad picked it up. Principal Sandven and board member Debbie McBee gave enthusiastic congratulation sans the usual hugs and handshakes. Superintendent Chris Fritsch gave each graduate a fist bump.

Tom Bachman, of Oregon Youth Alive, ran the tech show from under a canopy, communicating with his team high above in the rodeo announcer’s booth. Bachman has been coming for 15 years since then-principal Tom Lovell spent the school’s pop can money for his services. This year, the Pendleton First Assembly congregation paid for the multimedia expertise. The video, livestreaming and sound skills seemed especially valuable during the technology-dependent 2020 graduation. Bachman monitored how many people clicked onto the livestream and found the audience hovering between 270 and 300. A grandmother in Texas had just added a comment.

At the microphone, class president Emily Rinehart said the class of 2020 faced COVID-19 with fortitude and flexibility.

“Even the coronavirus couldn’t dampen our successes,” Rinehart said. “We got our acceptances for college while quarantining in our homes, not even knowing if we’ll be able to attend them in the fall. We earned over $2 million in scholarships from the confines of our bedrooms. We are graduating after months of Zoom calls and online classes. We parked our cars in circles 6 feet apart just to hang out with our friends.”

During a break between grad groups of 25, Assistant Principal Curt Thompson said the entire administration, members of the parent club and others planned the commencement ceremony from scratch. After designing a ceremony that offered togetherness and social distancing in the same unprecedented package, they worried about the X factors, one of which was parents and how long they would stop to take pictures and celebrate their grad.

“We didn’t know whether it would take five seconds or 45 seconds,” Thompson said.

Weather was another unknown, he said. When he awoke earlier that morning, rain sheeted from the sky. It cleared by 10 a.m., leaving puddles that were soaked up with a clay product often used to dry soggy baseball fields. During the ceremony, the sun shined on cue.

McBee, on her 11th graduation as a school board member, said the ceremony brought plenty of special moments and pure joy, despite the tough circumstances.

“Every family was still celebrating,” she said. “There was confetti and cheers and pride and moms with tears running down their cheeks. In a certain sense, it was a little more personal because the family could be right there.”

School counselor Ron Murphy, who knows most all the seniors, said the students first hoped they’d return to school. Hope evolved into frustration and uncertainty, and then “it was a little bit of anger.” Some wanted to postpone graduation until a traditional ceremony was safe.

“Then reality set in,” Murphy said. “They made the best of it and said, ‘Let’s enjoy the day.’”