High school class valedictorian Alem Hadzic was unusually sombre before delivering his commencement speech on May 16. “People were coming over to wish me luck and I was kind of blowing them off,” Hadzic, who lives in Texas, told TODAY.com. “In my head, I was thinking, ‘Can I do this?’.” His peers did not know Hadzic, 18, had just come from his father’s funeral. Miralem Hadzic died of pancreatic cancer at age 52. Somehow, Hadzic’s legs carried him to the podium.
And he plans to make his late father proud. “I am going to spend every hour of every day working as hard as I can to achieve all my goals because that’s what he wanted, and I’m going to do it for him,” he said. The Early College High School graduate received a standing ovation. Hadzic says he had his speech written out but went rogue when speaking about his dad. “I had a new influx of emotions and I couldn’t just read off a script,” he told TODAY.