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NHS students honored during Gordon Parks celebration
Abby Blankenship and Melissa DeCocq, two Nevada High School students, were honored as winners in this year's Area High School Creativity Contest, a part of the four-day Gordon Parks Celebration held Oct. 1-4 at Fort Scott Community College. Both students won with writing related to this year's theme, "Diversity in My Life."
Abby, a junior, won Second Place with an essay titled, "A Piece of the Puzzle," while Melissa, a senior, won an Honorable Mention with her poem entitled "Colorblind."
Along with their mothers and their sponsoring teachers, Mrs. MacArthur and Mrs. Sudkamp, Abby and Melissa were guests of the Gordon Parks Center at "A Kansas Sampler" Luncheon held on Oct. 3.
After the luncheon, the winners presented their work to the audience and then received a certificate, a cash award and a copy of" The Learning Tree" from Jill Warford, director of the Gordon Parks Center. Warford stated that since entries, which had come from all over the region, had been so strong this year, judging had been especially difficult. "The group of over 50 entries showed that the students had really taken the time to think about Gordon Parks' life and apply it to their own. Their essays, poems, and photos were all very good."
Throughout the day, the students talked and posed for pictures with members of the Parks' family and cast members from "The Learning Tree" and "Shaft," two movies directed by Gordon Parks. They also attended sessions on photography of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries presented by Michael Edelson, retired Professor of Art and Photography at The State University of New York at Stony Brook and good friend of Gordon Parks and by Barbara Baker Burrows, picture editor at Life Magazine and long-time friend of Gordon Parks.
Both students freely expressed their feelings about attending the celebration. Abby expressed enthusiasm by saying, "My day at the Gordon Parks Center in Fort Scott was so amazing. It was really neat to read my essay on the adoption of my little cousin and to win second place, but I really enjoyed the speakers. I got to hear first-hand how interesting Gordon Parks really was."
Melissa summed up the experience by saying, "It was fascinating to hear the essays and poems being read by the authors themselves as well as seeing the winning photos. It demonstrated how people my age care about diversity, an issue that can seem so distant in our region. Diversity, both racial and non-racial, is everywhere, and, entering this contest, really made us think about it."