NATCHEZ — For North Natchez High School’s graduating class of 1989, the most cutting memory of graduation was one they never got to have.

Friday, after 25 years, the graduates decided to change that.

The night they were meant to graduate was heavy with meaning for the class of ‘89. It was their last night of high school, and the last night North Natchez High School would exist. The next year, the neighborhood school system would be reorganized, and students from North Natchez and South Natchez high schools would study together at the unified Natchez High School.

The ceremony that evening was at the former Margaret Martin stadium. Skies had been beautiful during the day, but by the time the graduates filed onto the field, clouds glowered overhead.

The commencement exercises opened, but so did the heavens above, ending them with a drenching rain. No contingency had been made for weather, and the ceremony never resumed.

“Our dream was to walk across that stadium,” class member Dorothy McMorris Butler said. “We were the last class, and we cried because it felt like we didn’t get to finish.”

Three days after the 25th anniversary of that unplanned for rain storm, Butler and 64 other members of the 189 graduates of North Natchez’s class of 1989 got the opportunity to finish.

Donning green caps and gowns, they marched to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance” and had their diplomas presented in a graduation ceremony.

This time, however, the long-overdue rite of passage was conducted under the safety of a gym roof at Robert Lewis Magnet School, the former site of North Natchez High School.

Butler has received a teaching degree from Alcorn State University and is currently studying for a masters of arts in teaching, but Friday night was about high school.

“It feels like we are getting to come back and finish that dream,” she said.

Class member Fred Johnson said he was glad to get an opportunity to finish something that had nagged him in the back of his mind all of these years.

“It was a real disappointment, it was horrible,” he said. “My family, they are as excited about this like it is their own graduation.

“I have thought about this for years, it is one of the regrets of my life, never getting to graduate, so when they brought this idea forward, I jumped at the chance to help bring it together.”

The class president and valedictorian Hiawatha Northington took the opportunity to finish his speech that was interrupted, and the class took time to honor those who have since died.

The dual graduation exercises and class reunion came, in part, from the work of class member Angela Brooks, who wrote letters to the newspaper and personally asked the Natchez-Adams School District board of trustees to allow the class to use Robert Lewis for the effort. The story isn’t about her, Brooks said, but about what the ceremonies mean to everyone.

“Everyone here tonight is excited like it is 1989,” she said.