Multiply the 334 Alvirne High School graduates by 10, and you get a community of 3,000 friends and extended family members who converged on the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester on Saturday morning to watch commencement ceremonies for Hudson’s venerable high school.

If the family of graduating senior Alexis Swiniarski is any indication, the ratio of 10 people per graduate might be low.

Counting grandparents, uncles, nieces and nephews, a dozen members of her family were expected to attend the ceremonies, said Swiniarski’s mother, Karen Wu, as she waited in the arena as some of those guests were outside scouring for parking spaces.

But those dozen guests represented only a drop in the bucket compared to the 162 members of the extended family – about half of which were expected to attend a family celebration later honoring Alexis.

“I’m the only one here in New Hampshire,” Wu said. “We were all born and raised right in Boston.”

Wu’s parents made the trip to watch their granddaughter graduate with the Alvirne Class of 2010 in a sea of maroon and gold.

“For them to come up here is a big deal,” Wu said. “Anything outside of (Route) 128 is a foreign country to them.”

While the graduates were honored, the day was as much for family, and the importance of family was a theme that echoed through the various speeches.

In his address, Salutatorian Christopher M. Rochon thanked his father and family for their “love and support” and his mother “for behaving selflessly at every moment to do what was best for me.”

Class President Carissa Marie Logano said her classmates sitting there wearing “our ever-so-stylish caps and gowns” will “make our fathers proud and make our mothers cry as they utter that famous ‘my baby’s all grown up.’?”

“We finally made it, you guys,” Logano said to boisterous applause.

Running through lessons her class has learned in 12 years of school, she concluded, “Maybe the most important thing we’ve learned is to be a community.”

Valedictorian Caitlin Teague used a kindergartner struggling to learn to write her name as a metaphor for students over the course of their academic career learning to put their signature on life.

“We have also developed our own unique signature,” Teague said. “No matter what style you write in, those closest to you can always recognize it as your own.”

Rochon joked, “Of course, I’m a teenager as well as salutatorian,” which meant he waited until the day before it was due to start writing his speech. He then wasted hours on Facebook before he “went to Google for the answer” on how to write the address.

He was hundreds of words into the speech before he figured out the message he wanted to convey – that neither the past nor future is worth fretting over.

“The most important moment – the only moment – is right now,” Rochon said. “I urge each of you to live for right now.”

The ceremonies included the naming of two award recipients. The G. Leonard Nase Scholarship went to Benjamin E. Naglieri and the Chester J. Stecevicz Scholarship to Sara Rose Auclair.

The B-Naturals chorus performed the national anthem and “Time to Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro).”

Principal Bryan K. Lane noted that he was in his 12th year at Alvirne. In his remarks, Lane cited the example of three of the school’s teachers who put all of themselves into their work.

“My hope for each of you is to find something that you can really live,” Lane told the graduates.

The key to life is to find something you feel a passion for, and not to do something just for the money, Lane said.

His best moments are “being in the middle of a gymnasium for 1,500 screaming teens,” Lane said, thanking the students for making his life exciting and rewarding.

“Please remember, you will be Broncos forever and you can always come home,” Lane said.

The commencement was a dry run for Amy Raymond, 18, of Nashua. She was at the arena to watch her boyfriend, Anthony Braccia, 17, graduate.

The next day, Raymond would be back in the arena, this time wearing her own cap and gown as she graduated with her Nashua High School North classmates.

Braccia will attend the Universal Technical Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Raymond looks forward to beginning classes at the Continental Academie of Hair Design in Hudson in three weeks. Waiting for her boyfriend’s graduation to begin, Raymond admitted to being nervous, and to looking ahead to her graduation today.

“I think I’m more excited for mine,” she said.

Patrick Meighan can be reached at 594-6518 or pmeighan@nashuatelegraph.com.