High school president writes notes thanking fellow seniors — 180 of them

Emily Post would be proud.

A high school class president in Massachusetts who gave a commencement speech wanted to recognize all of his fellow graduates. So he wrote them personal thank-you notes presented at the ceremony — 180 to be exact.

“I wish I could’ve acknowledged you all, but there was simply not enough time," Mason Macuch of Lakeville said in his June 7 speech. “Instead, I want you to reach under your chairs, where you will find a personal note that I’ve written to each of you as a way to say one final goodbye and thank you for making these years that will soon pass the ‘good ole days.’”

The seniors at Apponequet Regional High School about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Boston found envelopes containing 5-by-7-inch (13-by-18-centimeter) white cards with their messages.

Macuch said it took him about 10 hours to write the cards. As class president, he said he knew most of the students.

“I just wrote anything from farewell messages to little memories that I had with whoever I was writing to, or maybe if it was a close friend, a longer message to them,” Macuch, 18, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “Anything that I could think of about the person I wanted to say about them before we graduated and went on our separate ways.”

Macuch had to clear the idea with school administrators first. He arrived an hour before the ceremony and got help from an assistant principal and a teacher taping the cards under the chairs.

It was a surprise to everyone, said his best friend, Conor Tripp, in an email.

“I do not consider myself an emotional person, but his speech and the gesture of writing each and every member a letter moved me so much and I was very emotional from that moment on,” Tripp said. “It was such a special way to acknowledge every member of the class and show a strong bond between the members of our class.”

Macuch said a lot of graduates thanked him in person afterward. Many parents sent him nice comments on social media.

“Some people I hadn’t talked to in a few years were just so thankful for them. It was really nice to see that they were just so appreciative of all the hard work that went into them, and it was a really nice way to say goodbye to everyone,” said Macuch, who is starting college in the fall and plans to study biochemistry.

He was trained well.

“My mom always pushes to write a thank-you note,” he said.