Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 19, 1993 TAG: 9306190031
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
"This is an awfully friendly class. They're going to miss each other," said guidance counselor Carolyn Canada.
It's also a competitive class with a lot of high achievers. The race for top honors was practically a photo finish.
At the same time, it's a diverse group of individuals.
One of them is Andy Clark, whom Canada calls "the epitome of a well-rounded student." An academic achiever and competitor and four-sport athlete, he was class president his first three years in high school. He's been a Roanoke Times & World-News paper carrier for eight years.
Clark, a member of the National Honor Society, has a four-year scholarship to Virginia Military Institute through its Institute Scholars program, which will offer him a chance to study at Oxford for a year. He said he picked VMI over the Air Force Academy, which also invited him, because he feels the Lexington school will provide a better balance of opportunities.
"It opens some other doors for you," he said.
Right now, he's focusing on this fall.
"I'm just concentrating on getting through the `rat line,' " he said, referring to the school's rigorous approach to first-year cadets. After his sophomore year, he can decide whether to continue in a military or an academic track.
The articulate 18-year-old seeks a medical career, and has already started thinking about specific medical schools.
If Clark represents the class's self-directed student, then Emily Brouwer, 18, represents its literary and artistic side. Canada describes her as "graceful under pressure" and with a maturity beyond her years.
Modest, too. She neglected to mention that she was a National Merit Scholarship finalist.
With a full scholarship to George Mason University, she's excited about the opportunities available in the Washington area, especially for internships when she graduates.
Brouwer's been editor of her school's literary magazine and an assistant editor of its newspaper.
"I really like interviewing people," she said.
An independent study in creative writing has whetted her appetite to possibly continue in that vein. Among other literary accomplishments, she won first place in the Virginia High School League poetry contest, and placed second in the Chautauqua Festival's grade 9-12 short story category this year.
She co-captained the English Mountain Academic Competition Conference team.
She forgot to mention she's in the National Honor Society.
The product of an artistic family, she enjoys working in watercolors and oil pastels.
Though reserved, Emily Brouwer is no Emily Dickenson, despite her passion for poetry. She lettered in cross country for two years. Outside school, she's a part-time janitor, a job she finds "interesting."
Hands-on abilities of another type altogether have brought 18-year-old David Shelor to the brink of national recognition in the field of precision machining. Along with his teacher Maury Sharp, Shelor - who won the state Vocational-Industrial Clubs of America contest in precision machining - will go for national honors later this month.
"The hands-on machining is just part of it," he said, noting the contest also will involve blueprint reading, parts inspection, a knowledge test, ability to use basic hand tools for machining work, and even something called "computerized numerical control."
"If I place in the top 20, I'll be happy," he said.
Canada says Shelor "has a good sense of himself" and has taken on a more difficult track in mathematics than some of his vocational classmates.
He's interested in a machinist's career when he completes a two-year program at New River Community College. The Lion's Club has given him a $600 scholarship.
Like Clark and Brouwer, Shelor has an after-school job. He's also developed a keen interest in stock car racing.
"I like working on them better than I do driving," he said.
Canada says Shelor, Brouwer and Clark clearly are the pilots of their own achievements. "They'll make it," she predicted.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***