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38 at MCHS get new start, receive diplomas
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County High School was created to be a safe haven for students who needed another chance, and at graduation Friday 38 students showed they had seized the opportunity and received their high-school diplomas.
Graduates heard from Cindy Cairns, who played a key role in founding the school; Judge Nathaniel R. Jones, Youngstown native and retired federal judge and longtime civil-rights advocate; and the Rev. Omarosa Manigault, a Youngstown native probably best known for her reality- television appearances.
The Rev. Ms. Manigault told graduates, including her nephew, Jalen Anderson, that she is proof that “you may start here, but you may go anywhere.”
She grew up in the Westlake housing projects on the city’s North Side and graduated from The Rayen School. She later attended Central State University in Ohio, Howard University and Payne Theological Seminary, also in Ohio.
“This is your moment to prove right now that you are not a statistic. You are not an at-risk kid. ... Right now at this moment, you have the chance to put it all behind you. You don’t have to allow those labels: She had a baby, she dropped out, he’s in jail. You can shed every one of those labels, because today they have to call you something else. Today, they have to call you a graduate,” she said.
Ms. Manigault praised the students, their families and the faculty and staff at MCHS. The high school originally accepted only students who had been suspended or expelled from high schools throughout the county, but now accepts students through open enrollment and those who had dropped out but returned to graduate.
She called half a dozen graduates to the podium to speak, including Jermaill Calhoun and Caydruih Hardaway.
“For me to be graduating, after the stuff I’ve been through and the friends I lost to prison and the grave. ...If you keep your head up ... you can do it,” Calhoun said.
Hardaway said she overcame obstacles, too, thanks to her family.
“I’m the oldest of four children. My mom was a single mom. I got in a lot of trouble, and I’m just so happy to be here now. Thank you, mom. I love you,” she said.
Judge Jones said the graduates have overcome hurdles that others will never have to face. He encouraged them to keep achieving and recited the Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son,” in which a mother describes her life’s journey as a climb on a difficult staircase, fraught with tacks, splinters and dark corners.
Through it all, the mother keeps climbing and tells her son: “So boy, don’t you turn back / Don’t you set down on the steps / ‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard / Don’t you fall now / For I’se still goin’, honey / I’se still climbin’ / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”
“Keep on climbing and congratulations,” the judge said.
Remarks also were made by Anthony D’Apolito, MCHS board president; Jennifer Whittemore, MCHS administrator; the Rev. Lewis Macklin II, pastor of Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church; and Judge Theresa Dellick of Mahoning County Juvenile Court.