4 area students receive Saint Michael’s award

Staff report

Four Mahoning and Shenango Valley high school students were awarded the 2012 Saint Michael’s College Book Award for Academic Achievement with a Social Conscience, demonstrating a commitment to leadership in volunteer service and academic achievement.

The four students:

William Flynn of New Castle, a student at Kennedy Catholic High School.

John Graff of Poland, a student at Cardinal Mooney High School.

Laurel Michalek of New Castle, a student at Kennedy Catholic.

Gianna Parella of Canfield, a student at Cardinal Mooney.

Award recipients, named at schools throughout the country, are high school juniors who are inductees of the National Honor Society or an equivalent school-sponsored honors organization.

They must demonstrate a commitment to service activities in high school or community organizations, taking leadership roles in these activities.

Saint Michael’s, in Burlington, Vt., one of America’s top-10 college towns, was founded on the belief that serving others is part of its Catholic tradition, and through the award seeks to honor those who demonstrate the true spirit of volunteerism.

Winners were presented the book “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers” by Loung Ung, a 1993 Saint Michael’s College graduate who has become a widely acclaimed author.

In the book, Ung gives a powerful autobiographical account, from a child’s perspective, of surviving captivity during the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.

She reveals an indomitable spirit in the face of profound suffering, including the loss of both her parents and two of her siblings.

Ung has written a memoir about a family’s survival, and in turn, about the development of Ung’s ongoing crusade for a world free of land mines.