Mom Documents Unexpected Senior Year Ending For Farmington Grads

FARMINGTON, CT — With most of the world, and certainly Connecticut, shut down due to the new coronavirus pandemic, new terms such as "connected learning" and "social distancing" have sprung into the American lexicon. Due to serious restrictions and cancellation of the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year by Gov. Ned Lamont, high school seniors are missing out on most of the things that usually create lifelong memories.

All across the state, sports seasons have been wiped out, proms will not be held, class trips are canceled, musical and theatrical performances were axed and graduation ceremonies have been either altered or eliminated. Hours normally spent on campus with side-by-side camaraderie have been replaced by unprecedented remote coursework in virtual isolation.

It is certainly not the culmination of 13 years of schooling that Unionville resident Terri Mongeon envisioned for her son Jacob and his Farmington High School classmates. A photographer, Mongeon had been planning to shoot her son’s senior pictures, but "they evolved into something completely different than we had originally planned," she said.

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On April 29, Terri and Jacob spent about an hour on the high school grounds documenting "the surreal ending to his senior year. It was lonely, empty and not at all how he imagined it would be," she said.

She took black and white photos of her son alone in various locations, including the stadium bleachers, in front of the building entrance and sitting on a bench. At one point, a pair of friends were pictured with Jacob in the parking lot, maintaining safe distance practices.

"Given the current situation with COVID-19, my son and the whole class of 2020 are facing the end of their school career much differently than they had anticipated," Terri said. "My goal was to document the ending of high school in this turbulent time. I wanted to capture the reality, the sadness and the emptiness that he and his classmates are facing. It’s a story that I felt needed to be told, and documented. It’s been over 100 years since our country’s last pandemic. Having documentation of this milestone is something I wanted to capture, not just for us as his parents, but it’s something I wanted him to have to be able to share with his family in 30 years."

Some of the stirring photos she captured are shown below; more may be seen here.