Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Rotary Honors Top Students

A total of 20 students were recognized by the Gurdon Rotary Club at the annual Rotary Academic Banquet Thursday, April 30.

The club recognized the top 10 juniors and seniors at the banquet, while presenting one lucky student with the Rotary Scholarship.

Dr. David Thomson, director of the honors program at Henderson State University, and president-elect for the state's Rotary organization, began by telling those gathered the theme of this year's Rotary International is "Show Rotary Cares.

"This banquet is a perfect example of showing the theme," he said. "Gurdon cares and rewards education."

Next year's theme, he said, will be "Follow the Rotary Dream. Gurdon has a tradition of dreaming, Thomson continued, giving Hoo-Hoo and the Gurdon Light as examples.

"All students have dreams," he said. "Some of these dreams are tied to education."

Thomson then read a portion of an essay written by Hugh Gallagher, a student applying for entry to New York University. The essay showed humor and imagination as Gallagher boasted of his accomplishments, concluding the essay by saying he'd never been to college. Thomson said the young man, on the basis of his work, realized his dream and was admitted to NYU.

Dreams, he said, are being realized at Henderson as well. The college of education was recently given notice of being accreditation, with both bachelor's and master's programs accredited.

The college of arts and science has also seen improvements with the air of a science facility grant.

Thomson said in 1980 there was no honors program at HSU, but the faculty began discussing this and a dream emerged.

From the dream, a program was developed for students through their college career. But, the students also got involved with their dreams and the honors program expanded even further.

"Through hard work and the dreams of the students, we now have an honors college," he said. "They stuck to their dreams."

Thomson urged the students to follow advice given by Winston Churchill Never give up.

The top 10 juniors for 1997-98 were Eric Allen, Bethany Cooper, Josh Griffin, Jennifer Kuhn, Tammie McArty, Philip McGuirt, Rachelle Reece, Amy Ross, Mandy Shaver and Christopher Wise.

The top seniors were Marcus Crawley, Rusty Freeman, Tara Hughes, Shane McBride, Adrianne Porcelli, Kelly Purifoy, Kimberly Robertson, Andy Taylor, Kara Thomas and Marcus Wright.

Wright was also bestowed with the Rotary Scholarship.