It's obvious to New Jersey people and should be obvious to Gov. Phil Murphy that we the people want to find a way to have live graduations for our senior classes.

A letter was sent out Friday to the Department of Education discouraging public gatherings. It was later walked back  in park New Jersey State Police Chief Patrick Col. Patrick Callahan after pushback that included a tweet from state Sen. Declan O'Scanlon. State officials now say drive-by "wave parades" to congratulate graduates are OK, but people can't all gather in one place. There's also a petition against "virtual" graduations, and Linden Mayor Derek Armstead called my show with what he'd like to do for the graduates in his town.

"We have a very unique situation where we have an airport in Linden," Armstead said. "We had a car show there with 500 cars. There's more than adequate space for us to have a drive-by ceremony, which is exactly what we were planning."

"To go along with that," the mayor added, "we have a vacant shopping center that's adjacent to the airport, that would allow cars to queue up in a very safe fashion."

What a great idea!

"I think if we could pull this off it would be a very nice thing to do for our seniors to bring some cheer to everything else this year," he said.


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The mayor was disappointed with the letter and he's hoping they backtrack a little bit more so that the seniors of Linden can have live graduation this year.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Steve Trevelise. Any opinions expressed are Steve's own. Steve Trevelise is on New Jersey 101.5 Monday-Thursday from 7pm-11pm. Follow him on Twitter @realstevetrev.

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