The 11 girls wearing white turned their class rings so the keys of knowledge faced each wearer's heart, then hugged goodbye and graduated yesterday as the final senior class of Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy.

As they left the school's vaulted Music Hall, they carried with them a charge to continue spreading the traditions and principles -- humility before God, love of learning, hard work to excel and kindness to one another -- that the all-girls Catholic school in Wheeling, W.Va., now closed, has cultivated in its graduates for 160 years.

"If there truly is a candle burning in every Mount de Chantal soul, you must take your candle and go light the world," valedictorian Raven Hannah Weaver of Bethany, W.Va., who will attend Berea College this fall, told her classmates. "For by doing so, the light of Mount de Chantal will never truly die but rather illuminate the world through all the lives she has so duly touched."

Students, alumnae and teachers tried to keep yesterday's commencement exercises upbeat for the sake of this year's graduating seniors and their families. But many said they're still mourning the death of a much-loved school they feel can never be replaced, and that they can't quite believe they have lost.

"It's very difficult to grasp the idea of not being able to graduate from Mount de Chantal," said junior Sara Fowler, who has attended the Mount since fifth grade. "There's part of me that still thinks I'm going to show up here again in August."

Despite all the congratulations and optimism for their futures, even some graduates said they felt depressed that they will be the last members of a tightly knit community of women taught to value themselves, each other and the world.

"I really regret that other women won't be able to experience that," said Mattie Ruth Cannon, of Washington, Pa., who plans to spend part of next year working in an orphanage in Uganda.

Plagued for years by declining enrollment and the ballooning costs of its aging, drafty buildings, the eight remaining Catholic sisters at Mount de Chantal -- a school older than the state of West Virginia itself -- announced in January that they could no longer afford to operate the school. The Mount, which was co-ed from pre-K through grade five, was the only all-girls secondary school in West Virginia.

Just keeping the Mount going through this year so that the 2008 senior class could graduate properly required a minor miracle: A last-minute legacy grant from a 1906 alumna and a skilled financial manager kept the lights on and the teachers paid through May, but no longer.

And throughout the year, everyone working at the school did all they could to keep it working properly and to continue educating its remaining 134 students, most of whom will attend area parochial schools in the fall.

"When the word came through that Mount de Chantal was closing, we were angry, we were sad, we were everything in between," said Mrs. Sharon Campbell, the Mount's head of school. "And then we came together as a family and as a community."

After attending Ringgold High School with about 1,400 other students as a freshman and sophomore, that sense of community felt welcoming to Daryn Janai Wilkerson of Donora, Pa. It also helped smooth the transition to what she feels were tougher courses at the Mount.

"Academically, it was a challenge, but I succeeded," said Daryn, who will attend Seton Hill University this fall.

Daryn's mother said she saw her daughter develop a renewed belief in herself during her two years at the Mount.

"She regained a confidence that was lost," said her mother, Erin Wilkerson. "As a female, she was able to present herself well, and that means a lot."

After Mallory Jane Dille transferred to the Mount from her public high school, her grades "jumped way up" because of smaller class sizes and more individual attention, according to her father, Donald Dille. Mallory will attend Alderson-Broaddus College this fall to study athletic training.

"We're glad she was down here," said Mr. Dille, who runs a sheep farm with his family in Prosperity, Pa., just south of Washington. "She got more out of the classes than she would have at other schools."

At the Mount, the teachers not only gave students individual attention, but also encouraged them to give their opinions, stand up for themselves and "not shrink back," Raven Weaver said. She and her fellow graduates need to encourage that Mount tradition and others by keeping in touch with their younger classmates, she said, even though the younger girls won't get the chance to become alumnae.

"It's very important to continue the legacy even though the Mount is no longer in existence," she said. "There are so many undergraduate women who have been deprived of this opportunity, but they're still Mount girls through and through."