Flowers graduates celebrate achievements

Thursday, June 1, 2006

As she did last-minute preparations to her hair and cap before graduating from Charles Herbert Flowers High School Wednesday, Jeanette Wooten knew she wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for one teacher.

In freshman year, Wooten, now 17, and her friends hadn’t taken their education seriously, she said.

But by sophomore year, with the advice of Tara Jones, the television production teacher, Wooten knew she had to shape up.

As a result, she and her friends all graduated, and Wooten was planning a celebratory cookout later in the day for 50 friends and relatives at her Glenarden home.

‘‘I had to work hard to make up for the mistakes I made in the beginning,” she said.

Wooten and several other graduates admitted to a mixture of emotions, including nervousness and excitement, before the ceremony at the Comcast Center, University of Maryland.

‘‘I’m nervous because it’s my graduation, what I’ve been waiting for my whole life,” said Mitchellville resident Junae Bell, 17, adding reaching the ceremony was a relief. ‘‘Everything was hard. High school was hard, period.”

Relatives and friends in the crowd and the ceremony’s speakers lauded the graduates for their accomplishments.

Upper Marlboro residents Gloria and Anthony Jackson were among several well-wishers carrying signs congratulating their graduate, filming the ceremony on a camcorder and snapping digital photos.

The Jacksons and about 15 others went through so much trouble for graduate LaTasha Heckstall because she asked for it, said Anthony Jackson, her stepfather.

The student speakers, in turn, thanked their parents and teachers for their guidance. The graduates’ accomplishments wouldn’t be possible without the adults’ input, the graduates said.

‘‘I know I can say with confidence this is the best class at Charles Herbert Flowers High School. We have paved the way for the underclassmen,” salutatorian Karen Stark said. ‘‘We have graduates going to top colleges and universities around the country. But with all our accomplishments, we never forgot who we are.”

Valedictorian Eletha Flores encouraged her classmates to look at the world through another set of eyes because that would help to improve their vision.

‘‘How else can you find out what works and what doesn’t unless you test the world around you,” she asked. ‘‘I can see immense pride in your eyes and the eyes of our teachers as we are the best class to graduate from Charles Herbert Flowers High School.”

Before accepting their diplomas, the graduates left to the school a banner with its slogan saying, ‘‘A Mecca of Excellence,” and commissioned art department chairwoman Kristen DeMoss to create a bust of the school’s namesake, the Tuskegee Airman from Glenarden who attended the ceremony.

Keynote speaker Saadiq El-Amin, a medical resident at the University of Virginia, spoke of the obstacles he had to overcome at an early age, including being the son of 16-year-old high school dropouts and flunking second grade.

He told the graduates to mind six points that would help them be successful: success is a journey, not a destination; not to let someone else’s dreams define them; know their legacies and roots; sharing their struggles with others; to remember God doesn’t choose the qualified, but qualifies the chosen, and to always work hard and not to quit.

‘‘I feel today you are my most important audience because the future lies within you and your dreams,” El-Amin said.

In saying she wanted only the best for the graduates, Principal Helena Nobles-Jones compared herself to a mother bird that has to push her babies out of the nest.

‘‘I know you had it in you because you have shaped the Mecca of Excellence,” she said, referring to the slogan, which was on the medallions the graduates wore. ‘‘Fly free, class of 2006!”

E-mail Jennifer Donatelli at jdonatelli@gazette.net.