Happy birthday Pat!!!

Bullycide

Pat’s life is still changing. It’s taking on new forms in the way all who knew him think and act and prioritize. For Andrew Nielson, it’s been the life-changing video “Twenty-Three.” For Libby, it’s been acceptance into the best therapy degree program in the country. For Colin, it’s been to pursue a degree in finance, which has required advanced math and programming, much like Pat used to do. For Bob, it’s been to caretake Pat’s grave and the Pomfret cemetery in which he lies. For me, it’s been to learn by writing and doing what I think Pat would value. Mainly, my learning has been through school, working with middle school students, offering a new understanding of their lives and a reordering of my own. Some of those understandings are not really understandings at all, but a drive for a wider take on the world. It’s a drive which includes Pat’s story and which is unfortunately the story of many other young people. It’s a drive motivated by Pat, but also by the students I see every day–their worries, questions, and fears. What about the hurts, the hates, the unknown, and the heartbreaks? Why is there violence? How do you handle pain?

This year, in particular, students asked questions of why young people, their own age, were so despondent that they took their own lives. How did they get to the same point as Pat? How did life look so hopeless that as young as age eleven, they came home from school and died soon afterward? Sometimes their questions were simpler. Why can’t people treat each other fairly?

As the newspaper advisor for my school, I encouraged them to write. Explore those issues, interview others, make sense out of the questions they pondered. But deep down the questions were mine. How could I explore, interview, and make sense? I was the student. I was the one really learning, and I did it alongside my middle school comrades. With a few names deleted, here were some of the results. For easier viewing, click on the article and then magnify.

More on Pat's Scholarship

From the Woodstock Villager, June 2010

One of the benefits of Pat's Scholarship is that it has allowed us to speak publicly about Pat and how we are encouraging his qualities in others. In the four years we've given the award, we've gone to area schools, explained a little about Pat, and praised local students. This year was different. This year we were able to thank two schools, which helped immensely after Pat died. Pomfret and Rectory schools have been paragons of caring institutions. I tried to explain the importance of that concern in my presentation remarks:

Our son Patrick Wood attended Pomfret School on the full four year Peck Scholarship. He was a national merit scholar. He earned perfect SAT’s. He won almost every book award possible. He graduated from Pomfret at the top of his class in 2001, and four years later, graduated from Stanford University with distinction in math.

Yes, Pat was an incredibly brilliant young man. He once said that he knew what it took to get an A. Internally, things just seemed to click and make sense for him. But the best part of him was his humor and his heart. He praised his teachers and mostly his coaches at Pomfret for opening him up to new dimensions of high school, for letting go and trusting himself and his teammates, for seeing how mental support will accomplish physical goals. Unfortunately, that mental support was not enough, and Pat died tragically in 2006.

In the wake of our sadness, the Pomfret and Rectory School response was incalculable. We were quite simply lifted up and pulled along with letters from students and faculty, flowers, food, hugs, tears–all were given constantly and infinitely until the end result was that we are able to stand before you today. The Pomfret and Rectory outpouring was nothing short of a renaissance for our family.

And so it is with deepest gratitude that we now give back to the communities that were so life giving to us. For the first time in the four years of this award, it is our honor and pleasure to give the Patrick Wood Memorial Prize for academic excellence to a Rectory student.

The Patrick Wood Prize has come home.

The recipient is a young man, headed for Pomfret, who closely resembles Pat with superior intellect, humor, and heart. He is a young man, whose passion for excellence was so strong that I worried about him. Homework was pages longer than average. Essays were fastidiously thorough. He devoted himself to each assignment, and he put up with my nagging about writing with power and brevity with a grace that I don’t often see.

But alongside his academic prowess was a humility, humaneness, and good old fashioned hilarity that I hadn’t known since Pat was alive. There is no better student for this award. It is my great privilege to award the Patrick Wood Prize to Daniel Kellaway.

Bob and me with Erik Bertelsen, Director of Pomfret School Admissions, presenting Pat's Award to Daniel Kellaway, who will be entering tenth-grade fall 2010

The Patrick Wood Memorial Prize was begun to honor Pat’s legacy of ability and integrity after he died in 2006. He had attended Pomfret School on the full four-year Peck Scholarship because of his academic achievement at the Pomfret Community School. But due to Pomfret School’s financial constraints, about two years after he won it in 1997, the Scholarship was ended. We wanted to give it back to Pomfret School. We felt strongly that the original parameters should be maintained and that it should be based on merit only. It’s not as large as we would like it to be. It was endowed by the Pomfret Board of Trustees last year and grants $1,000 to a local student matriculating to Pomfret each year. Our hope is that we can raise more for the winners, just as Pat received more, because they so obviously deserve it. They work hard for the success they earn. As a teacher, I see it every day in the classroom, and as Pat’s mom, I know the effort he gave to become valedictorian and get perfect SAT’s. He said he pretty much knew what it took to get an A, and I can say for sure that it took countless hours.

This year, there was no better student for this award. I was lucky to have Daniel in my eighth-grade lit class and in newspaper. He picked up new writing skills as easily as if he had known them all along. I saw him in the day-to-day moments when we all have ups and downs. Not Dan. He shone every moment, enjoyed new lessons, and responded wholeheartedly. He had an unwavering respect for all subject matter and a willingness more common in students twice his age. He deserves Pat’s Award and more. Along with the four previous outstanding winners from area schools, he is the quintessential example of why we started this Award. His fount of knowledge is already overflowing, and he is eager for so much more, but he’s also humble about it. He sees himself as a student, pure and simple, not as “accomplished,” and, of course, that made him all the more qualified. In addition to academic achievement, part of the criteria is character, and all of the previous winners have demonstrated that quality. It’s been nurtured and promoted at Pomfret School, which is why it will be a great new home for Daniel.