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closeA pork chop and hash browns are sizzling on the Waffle House grill when 2 p.m. rolls around. In walks Eboni Brown, an apron tied around her waist.
Not many seniors leave high school early to get to their full-time job.
“I got to pay the bills,” the 18-year-old says. “My paycheck goes to rent, lights, cable, gas, car insurance and food in the house.”
Since her sophomore year, her wages have helped support her 4-year-old sister, Mikayla, and their mom, who works at a cell phone billing center while also going to college.
But it just scratches the surface in the life of this Westside High School senior with bright brown eyes and a perfect smile.
Brown still remembers the life-changing day when she was 9 years old. It was the day her half sister Ericka left for a vacation.
“Her dad came and got her, and he never brought her back,” Brown said.
News of her sister’s fate made headlines on the front pages of The Telegraph in 1999 and 2000.
Ricardo Cleveland, 21 at the time, had taken Ericka to Florida. For a year, he told police the child was just missing.
Later, police found Ericka’s body in a cardboard box outside Daytona Beach.
Cleveland is now serving time on a manslaughter conviction for beating the child to death.
“Knowing she wouldn’t be seen anymore was really hard,” Brown said. “But my faith was improved. I try to make (the most of) life as much as possible.”
That’s why missing rite-of-passage moments, including her senior prom earlier this month, to work full time doesn’t bother her.
Brown has earned a $10,000 scholarship to help her attend Paine College, and she’s also saving parts of her paychecks to help with remaining college costs.
Those who know her, like Jazz Bryant, the Waffle House grill operator, say Brown is just one of those people “you know will do well.”
She dreams of becoming a nurse and helping sick children someday.
“I don’t know if I’ll cry more about graduating or more about the struggle I had to go through to get here,” Brown said before heading to another table to take an order.
— By Julie Hubbart
Eboni Brown
Age: 18
Activities/interests: Science, flag team, writing poems, singing
Least favorite high school moment: Wearing heels and snagging them on the hallway carpet and almost falling down.
Plans after high school: Paine College, then transferring to Georgia Southern to major in nursing.
Parting advice: “If you don’t believe in anyone, believe in yourself. With an accomplishment you can succeed.”
* * *
Wheelchair doesn’t hold back Crawford grad
ROBERTA — Andy Montgomery says he never thought of letting a wheelchair get in his way.
The 18-year-old was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was 5 years old. He’s been in a wheelchair since fifth grade.
Crawford County High principal Mike Campbell said that what one notices, though, is not the wheelchair but Montgomery’s ever-pleasant attitude.
“I just don’t let it hold me back,” Montgomery said. “I don’t feel that I’m different from the other students. I just deal with it every day.”
The Knoxville resident was raised on a farm. He said one of his early memories is riding in a truck with his grandfather to go out and feed the cows at the end of the day. That, in turn, has helped fuel his plans for the future and spurred his involvement with Future Farmers of America. He is a former club treasurer at school.
“I’ve always been interested in things ag,” he said.
He lives with his mother, Denise McGraw. His father, Marcus Montgomery, lives and operates a farm in Taylor County.
Montgomery plans to attend Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton this fall, get an associate degree and possibly go on to Fort Valley State University to pursue animal science studies.
The soft-spoken young man said he doesn’t see being in a wheelchair as a handicap.
“The way I see it, the others can walk and I can roll around,” he said. “I don’t let it get in my way. If I see something I want to do, I’ll find a way to do it.”
— By Jake Jacobs
Andrew Montgomery
Age: 18
Interests, activities: Agriculture studies
Favorite high school moment: “Last year, I went to a state FFA meeting in Macon. I loved seeing how other chapters work and making new friends.”
Plans after graduation: Spend time with family before going to college
Parting advice: “Work hard and have fun. These four years go by faster than you expect.”
* * *
FPD grad takes initiative to help her good friend
They met in fifth grade. She was always getting caught by the teacher for turning around in her desk to chat with the boy behind her.
Here now seven or so years later, Adelyn Bargeron isn’t getting in trouble for talking to Austin Childers anymore. They’re good friends, fellow graduates-to-be at First Presbyterian Day School. Now she’s the class president, and she thinks he just might be a departing high schooler’s best example of how to take on life.
When he was in sixth grade, Childers was diagnosed with mitochondrial disease, a debilitating condition that affects the parts of a body’s cells responsible for producing nearly all of their life-sustaining energy. Childers has spent much of the past school year in and out of the hospital.
In February, with FPD set to host the regional basketball tournament, Bargeron thought it would be a good venue to raise awareness and some money in the name of Childers’ disease. Bargeron made hundreds of green ribbons and set up a booth to sell them for $1 apiece.
She told Childers about it, and he thought it’d be a good idea to donate the money to the Children’s Hospital at The Medical Center of Central Georgia.
“I’ve learned that I can’t feel down about anything in my life when I think about my sweet friend in the hospital,” Bargeron said. “He’s enduring so much and he still fights this awful disease. He’s the most encouraging person I’ve ever met.”
Bargeron’s ribbons sold out the first night, and Bargeron worked late making more. The next night, they sold out again, netting more than $1,000 in the end, which the hospital matched.
“I had no idea how supportive the community and all of these schools were going to be,” Bargeron said.
“It just goes to show that when people are made aware of a situation that they will respond. All these parents and fans were touched by Austin and his spirit and positive attitude. ... He has been an incredible friend even though he suffers with unimaginable pain. He’s always forward-thinking. ... And he never utters a word about the IVs attached to him and the pain that he’s in.”
— By Joe Kovac Jr.
Adelyn Bargeron
Age: 18
Activities/interests: Basketball, track, senior class president
Favorite high school moment: School spirit week
Plans: Attending University of Georgia to pursue law or business interests
Parting advice: “Study hard and do your best.“
* * *
Mary Persons grad finds a place to call home
Isabella Henderson figures she’ll scan the crowd at Mitchell Stadium in Forsyth on the Friday night when she graduates from high school this month.
But she doesn’t know if she’ll see her birth parents in the audience, sitting there watching her, seeing the fruits of the choice their oldest girl made to save the only family she knows.
Bella, as she likes to call herself, has lived in foster homes, a youth home and with relatives much of her life. Late last year, a Forsyth family, friends of her late grandfather’s, adopted her along with her younger brother and sister.
Early in her high school career at Mary Persons, Bella slept in class, didn’t do her work.
“I failed a bunch of classes,” she said.
Then she was placed in a youth home in Macon, away from her siblings who were two and five years younger. Her way back to them: buckling down in school.
“I started to actually care about things then,” she said. “I didn’t want them to look at me like a loser. I started doing all my work.”
She now credits her adoptive family, the Hendersons, with “always, always, always drilling into your head the importance of education, and how without it you won’t have much.”
Bella says her real mom lives in town and so does her dad. She says her mother dropped out of school, and Bella says that was what she planned to do as a ninth-grader. “I didn’t like being (in school).”
Now here with Bella on the verge of graduating from high school, with plans to go to college and become a writer, she doesn’t know if the story of her high school days will draw to a close with her birth parents there to see it.
“My dad lives five minutes away from here and he doesn’t even try,” she said. “My mom, she said she was (coming), but I’m not sure she really will. She’s not really good on coming through with her promises.”
— By Joe Kovac Jr.
Isabella Henderson
Age: 17
Activities/Interests: Drama and chess clubs, writing short stories
Favorite high school moment: Playing the role of the Ghost of Christmas Present in a school production of “A Christmas Carol” as a freshman
Plans: Attending Macon State College to study journalism and mass communication
Parting advice: “Don’t goof off in school. It’s hard to make up.”
* * *
Art takes a different look in Rutland grad’s hands
Brittany Tucker has learned to see, to find beauty in the everyday objects that most folks don’t pay much attention to.
You know, the “stuff” that’s just lying around in the closet, in the trash, on the ground in parking lots, at ball fields.
Tucker, 18, a graduating senior at Rutland High School, has a unique combination of talents. She has the hands of a softball shortstop, which she was on the school team no less, and the eye of a budding artist.
Tucker’s artistic talents emerged over the past few years after she took a pottery class. Then the school’s kiln broke and she had to complete her portfolio for class using other three-dimensional objects.
She turned to the realm of found art, art that is fashioned or modified from things that might not pass as art in the traditional sense.
Tucker has crafted works from plastic foam, metal wire, glass and nails, among other scraps. She doodles in a notebook for inspiration.
“Sometimes, my art teacher (Tamara Barfield) and I, we’ll be walking in the parking lot and just pick up objects,” she said.
She once combined “a bunch of random stuff” that turned out to look like a fish.
“It’s different,” Tucker said, “and my art teacher loves it.”
Her creations usually take a week or so to complete.
She says the found-art genre suits her because “I cannot draw.”
Tucker expects to keep on plying her art skills after high school. And her art teacher told her she has an open invitation to drop in and use the pottery wheel.
— By Joe Kovac Jr.
Brittany Tucker
Age: 18
Activities/interests: Softball, tennis, art, church
Favorite high school moment: Softball road trips
Plans: Attending Middle Georgia College to study occupational therapy
Parting advice: “Ninth grade is your most important year. It’ll always follow you.”
* * *
Hutchings’ ‘Young Obama’ wants to improve community
When many of his counterparts at Hutchings Career Center were wearing sagging pants to school, it irked Bryant Collier so much that he started a “suit club.”
Without telling administrators, Collier, a sophomore at the time, got about 100 male students to come to school in a suit jacket and tie, and for a time the club caught on.
Collier, now a graduating senior, is known around Hutchings as a “young Obama.”
He became a licensed minister when he was 12. Outside of school, you can often find him around Macon giving a Sunday sermon.
He was a keynote speaker at Macon’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, he won an NAACP college scholarship, and he was a recent teen adviser for Macon Mayor Robert Reichert’s leadership summit to help improve the community.
In school, he has the second-highest number of community service hours, 218. He was the state’s Future Business Leaders of America central region vice president, and he served as a peer mediator, helping to work out conflicts between students before they escalate.
“Some people say I run the school, call me father or Mr. President,” he joked.
“I just call you Obama. You’re a 40-year-old in a 17-year-old’s body,” campus police officer Earl Evans said, overhearing a recent conversation.
Collier plans to attend either Morehouse College or Fort Valley State. He wants to study business management, get a doctorate and attend seminary. His dream is to one day start a nationwide program akin to the Boys and Girls Clubs and return to Macon.
“I don’t want to be in a top floor of a skyscraper pulling six figures and not be happy in my job,” he said. “I’d rather help the community.”
— By Julie Hubbard
Bryant Collier
Age: 17
Interests, activities: piano, fishing, church, community service
Favorite high school moment: Speaking at national Dropout Prevention Conference in Atlanta.
Plans after graduation: Fort Valley State or Morehouse College
Parting Advice: “If you don’t help home, you don’t really help yourself.”
* * *
Stratford grad shares his love of old movies
Once a month, Logan Butler takes an old classic film out of his library collection and heads over to a senior citizens center or church to show the movie.
Although Stratford Academy students need a minimum of 75 hours of community service to graduate, Butler met that goal more than a year ago.
He does this just for fun.
During his senior year, Butler has coordinated about 10 such movie days, mostly on weekends, at places such as Magnolia Manor and Vineville United Methodist Church in Macon.
“Classic movies are something I really enjoy, and there’s not that many people my age that think about them as still relevant,” the 18-year-old said. “The best group of people to share this love I have with is senior citizens.”
Most people in the viewing groups grew up watching the films, he said, and they have a story to share about them.
The Rev. Marcus Tripp, Vineville Methodist’s senior minister, said a session at the church that he and his wife attended was well-received. “People are interested that he’s interested enough in them.”
Butler became engrossed in old films years ago when his sister got him to watch a few, and he realized how entertaining they were.
Then he started collecting them. He has about 100 old movies in his library, from “Some Like it Hot” to “All about Eve.”
He plans to study journalism at the University of Georgia beginning this fall and pursue a career in broadcasting or advertising. He also plans to take a film studies class and write a screenplay.
“I would like to find some way to integrate film into my career path,” he said.
— By Julie Hubbard
Logan Butler
Age: 18
Interests/activities: drama; editor of The Gazebo, the school newspaper; film studies
Favorite high school moment: winning the state One Act Competition during sophomore year
Plans after graduation: University of Georgia, studying journalism
Parting advice: “Go with your instincts. When you follow where you’re being led, the experience is more cool in the end.”
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