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.