June 10--An empty chair adorned with fresh flowers and a purple ribbon marked the spot where Hadiya Pendleton would have sat at her high school graduation Tuesday night.
The chair was one of the ways former classmates were expected to acknowledge the slain 15-year-old honors student at the commencement ceremony that was as much about closure for the past as looking toward the future.
The graduation exercises for Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep, where Hadiya would have been a senior this year, were scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at Chicago State University. First lady Michelle Obama was expected to deliver the commencement address around 8 p.m., officials said. More than 3,000 tickets were distributed to the event, they said.
The selective enrollment school, where all of the 177 graduates have been accepted to college, won a nationwide video competition to get the first lady as the commencement speaker. But Obama's staff said she welcomed the opportunity to honor Hadiya's memory and celebrate the achievements of her graduating class.
After Hadiya was shot to death while seeking shelter from the rain on her way home from school in 2013, the first lady attended her funeral and met briefly with 30 of the teenager's close friends and classmates, offering them words of encouragement.
Her staff said the first lady would reference Hadiya in the graduation address.
Hadiya's killing brought national attention to Chicago's violence, which claimed more than 500 lives that year. The string of violence has not waned. The number of people shot in the city this year passed 1,000 late last week, according to a Chicago Tribune tally.
An unintended victim who just over a week before had performed with her school's band at President Barack Obama's inauguration festivities in Washington, Hadiya and her death became a symbol in the politically charged debate over gun laws. In 2013, the first lady invited Hadiya's parents, Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton and Nathaniel Pendleton, to be her special guests at the president's State of the Union address in which he implored Congress to vote on his gun control proposals.
A few days later, President Obama came to Chicago to meet with teenagers living in violence-torn neighborhoods and to promote his national gun agenda.
Meanwhile, in the two years since the her killing, King College Prep has engaged in a delicate balancing act, allowing students to pay homage to Hadiya while trying to keep them from being stuck in their grief.
On Tuesday night, students were determined to include Hadiya, who would have turned 18 last week.
She was to be featured in a video produced by her classmates and shown at the graduation ceremony. In a special acknowledgment, Hadiya's parents were to be presented with her yellow graduation cap and gown, as well as a personalized class ring set with an amethyst stone.
And when it would have been her time to step to the stage and receive her diploma, her name was to be called, just as her classmates' names had been.
Two of Hadiya's closest friends -- Kyra Caldwell, 17, and Amber Mitchell, 18 -- are among the graduates. For them, the first lady's visit was bittersweet, they said.
"It's wonderful that the first lady is speaking at our graduation, but it's a reminder that it's because of our best friend that she's coming," Caldwell said in an interview last week.
Mitchell said the graduation is one of many events during the year where Hadiya's absence was felt.
"Every event has been bittersweet, the prom, the first day of the senior year, graduation. It's fun. It's cool but there always a reminder that there's this one person missing," she said.
Principal David Narain said the last two years have been an exercise in compromise.
"The seniors were very close to her and had very strong ties," said Narain, who came to King in 2013. "The students felt like the school was not recognizing Hadiya's death in a way they felt was appropriate. We had to find a way to acknowledge the grief and allow the students to move on as Hadiya would have wanted them to."
A year ago, students wanted to memorialize Hadiya's tan locker by painting it purple, her favorite color. Counselors suggested instead of making it a constant reminder of her death that they place a purple lock on it.
After her death, students started an anti-violence campaign called Project Orange Tree. This year, they also selected her as the honorary prom queen.
As part of her "Reach Higher" initiative, which encourages students to pursue a post-secondary education, the first lady invited schools across the country to compete for her to speak at their high school graduation by participating in a video competition that promoted participation in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid program. King College Prep was chosen from among nearly 200 schools from across the country.
The students produced a video takeoff on the ABC television show "Scandal," in which Washington fixer Olivia Pope takes the first lady as a client and works to get 100 percent of the King students to apply for student aid.
According to Narain, this year's graduating class received $10 million in scholarships offers this year. Eighty-one percent of the graduates plan to go on to four-year colleges with the rest enrolling in a community college, joining the military armed forces or considering other options.
This fall, Hadiya's friends will start on a new path. Caldwell will head off to Tuskegee University in Alabama, where she wants to pursue a degree in occupational therapy. Mitchell will enroll at Clark Atlanta University to study psychology and theater.
Klyn Jones, 17, who attended Jones College Prep in the Loop, left after the killing and enrolled at Deerfield Academy, an elite boarding school in Massachusetts. Last year, she returned to Chicago and is graduating from Jones on Tuesday.
