Mooney grads aim for new challenges

May 29, 2017 at 12:05a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Whatever direction Joan K. Reardon takes her interest in and love for history, you can’t say that she is aiming low.

“I’d like to be president and the first female senator from Ohio,” Reardon said without hesitation about her long-term goals of combining what she plans to learn beginning this fall at Ohio State University about history and politics.

Paving a clear path for Reardon was a solid educational foundation she feels she received at Cardinal Mooney High School. That culminated with a diploma in her hands during the Mooney High Class of 2017 commencement Sunday afternoon in Stambaugh Auditorium.

Before enrolling at OSU, Reardon, a National Honor Society member, plans a summer trip to Boston. Specifically, she has a special interest in seeing the Freedom Trail, a 2.5-mile route that contains 16 historically significant sites such as meeting houses, churches, burying grounds and parks that tell much of the nation’s early history from the American Revolution and beyond.

“I feel very prepared for the future and feel there was no better place to spend the last four years of my life” than at Mooney, added Reardon, who was on the school’s speech and debate team that competed in a national tournament in Dallas during her sophomore year.

Solid communication skills, along with an appreciation for cultural diversity, also is vitally important to Grace A. Haddad, another NHS member whose main ambition is to complete a six-year medical program for which she intends to spend the first two years at the University of Akron, then enter Northeast Ohio Medical University.

Helping her build a foundation to attain her goal was having taken advanced-placement math and science courses as well as Spanish and German classes at Mooney. Another positive experience was during her time in a German exchange program that took her on a 10-day trip to Cologne, Germany, in the 11th grade.

“I’ve always had an interest in other cultures and learning about other people,” said Haddad, adding the combined experiences should give her a solid academic foundation and bedside manner that will go a long way toward being an excellent doctor.

Haddad also said she will miss her friends, teachers and the familylike atmosphere at Mooney.

Having been part of the speech team and performing in state competitions in her sophomore, junior and senior years was a crowning achievement for Maria C. Bova, who plans to enroll this fall at Youngstown State University to major in communications, with an eye on attending law school later.

Beforehand, Bova will spend part of the summer working in the concession stands at the Boardman Tennis & Swim Club, she explained.

“I’ll miss the most being somewhere that you know everybody and everybody knows me,” she said about leaving Mooney. “I love my teachers.”

Delivering the commencement address was Lawrence Bozick, who retired after having served 23 years at Mooney as an English teacher and the speech coach.

The core theme of his presentation was self-reliance, the importance of which he said could be summed up in three ways: maintaining financial independence, paying attention to one’s health and welfare and understanding the difference between job training and one’s education.

The grads would do well to get in the habit of placing 10 percent of their take-home pay in a credit union or other secure financial institution, to eat well and learn good cooking skills and approach having to take required humanities classes in college with a positive attitude.

“This is just for you. Stash it away someplace,” he said about handling money as part of the savings plan.

Bozick, a 1965 Mooney grad who also served five years in the Air Force that included two tours of duty in Vietnam, said such humanities classes likely will give Class of 2017 members the tools they need to prepare for the countless decisions, big and small, they will inevitably have to make.