For one among them, though, circumstance wouldn't quite allow it.
Leon "Lee" Ginn began feeling pain in his leg last Thursday. Days later, it had become so intense he checked into Abington Memorial Hospital. He never imagined he'd still be there Wednesday, graduation day, but doctors, suspecting a bacterial infection called MRSA, decided he had to stay.
"When I came in this morning, and I woke him up he seemed really sad, and I said 'what's the matter,' and he said, 'I'm supposed to be graduating at 4:00 p.m. today,' and I said 'What?' And I started the ball rolling," nurse Alise Page said.
And roll it did. If Lee couldn't make graduation, well, then these nurses were going to bring graduation to Lee.
"I wonder if we can get it on the TV, I wonder if we can get it here. So we called Council Rock asked them if they could do it, we called our IT department, went down to the gift shop and got some streamers and balloons," nurse Megan Rafferty said.
And just like that, the hospital room was transformed into a graduation stage and patient Lee into graduate Lee.
Technology, turns out, works both ways. Through his computer, Leon was able to be at his graduation, but through his cell phone, his friends were able to be by his side, at the hospital.
"I got 70 and counting texts," Lee said.
Lee's parents couldn't be more proud. Sure, this isn't how they'd pictured graduation, but then again:
"This is Lee...this is the way Lee does things," Lee's mother Barbara said.
And so, in hindsight, they wouldn't have it any other way. Neither would Lee.
"I couldn't have asked for more," Lee said.
And neither would the nurses, who fixed a broken heart.
"Oh we're tickled pink, we're happy everything turned out well for him," Page said.
