Windsor
“I always try to be a nice and good person,” she said. “And I really take pride in my work and what I do at school and want to do well.”
The details she left out, her special education case manager, Pamela Sterling, happily obliged filling in.
“(Hannah) is a remarkable young woman who is strongly committed to having the best life possible,” Sterling said in an email to the Valley News. “She is resilient and highly motivated to be successful.”
Fowler, 18, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a baby, and as a result has had mobility issues.
“I can’t walk long distances,” she said. “I can walk a bit with a cane or with somebody behind me, and I rely a lot on my wheelchair.”
But, she said, she hasn’t much let that stop her. Not even when it comes to sports.
“I couldn’t really do sports at school,” she said. “But I found a sport outside of school, power soccer, which is a game where you play soccer in an electric wheelchair. I always find new ways to do things. And that’s with anything. I can still do everything I want to do, I just have to find different ways to do it.”
In addition to completing all of her school requirements, she attended the audio-visual production program at River Valley Technical Center for two years. Sterling said that while Fowler was there, she received two awards from RVTC: the Program Completer Award and the Director’s Award. The Director’s Award includes a $600 annual scholarship for four years.
Fowler said she never has and never will let her disability define her.
“I want to prove people wrong,” she said. “Unfortunately there’s kind of this stereotype that people in wheelchairs and people with disabilities aren’t able to do as much as people who can walk or who don’t have a disability and that’s not true. We just have to do it differently. I am just as capable as everyone else around me.”
After graduation, Fowler said, she’s moving to Tennessee, where she hopes to start working toward a degree in psychology at Nashville State Community College. She said she ultimately would like to get her Ph.D. so that she can become a mental health counselor specializing in eating disorders. She said she became interested in that area of mental health after doing a project on it in school.
“I just want to help people and I thought that psychology would be the best way to do that,” Fowler said. As for making her way across the stage for graduation, she said, “I’m just going to be so proud and so happy. I just worked so hard. Everyone in our class did.”
That idea was echoed in the sentiments offered by faculty, parents and students alike at Friday night’s 150th graduation ceremony.
Windsor High Principal Tiffany Cassano remarked that this class in particular seemed to march to its own drumbeat. The students were a class with an insatiable appetite for answers. They questioned everything, she said. But above all, she said, this class will be remembered for its remarkable kindness and compassion.
Salutatorian Vincent Moeykens seemed to bear that out when he took time out from his speech to not only thank his family, but the community at large for coming out to school events and supporting the students, even when they didn’t have students in the school.
“They treated us like family,” he said. “Because we are. We’re a Windsor family.”
Valedictorian Emily McMullen, daughter of Windsor School Board Chairwoman Amy McMullen, used her time to share a sort of apology with her classmates.
She shared with them that in middle school, she became shy and ultimately withdrew from people. She explained that social situations were hard for her and she regretted not making more friends while she was in school. She said she wished her speech culminated in a story where she overcame all of her foibles to emerge the swan of her own story.
“But rarely are things so clear-cut,” she said. “There have been triumphs such as actually saying something witty and making people laugh and there have been failures such as overthinking a remark for so long that the conversation has ended. But that’s pretty standard for life in general. Sometimes things don’t go well. And when they don’t, you peel yourself off the floor, throw away any guilt or regret, and you move on.”
She said she lived in the past while looking toward the future all the while realizing the present was passing her by. She said the result was she didn’t have the typical high school experience. She wasn’t into sports nor was the center of attention.
“I didn’t have a connection with the vast majority of my class and for that, I am sorry,” she said. “But I read some pretty fantastic books, I spent hours upon hours dancing, and in my opinion I managed to be in two of the best plays Windsor has ever put on.
“My high school career wasn’t the stereotypical idea. But for me, there aren’t a lot of things I would change. And as I’ve opened myself up more and started to talk to people. … I’ve learned that no one has the stereotypical ideal high school career. There is always something going on beneath the surface. And that’s what makes us all unique.”
Melanie Plenda can be reached at plendame@gmail.com.
Windsor High School Class of 2018
Andrew Adams, Northern Vermont University (Johnson); Kyle Bacon, Community College of Vermont; Seth Balch of Hartland, Keene State College; Devon Beland; Lucia Blanchard, University of Vermont; Hunter Buchanan, Army; Elijah Collier, Boston University; Delaney Connolly, gap year; Jacob Curtis, University of Vermont; Patrick Dickinson, work; Bri Diggs, Castleton University; Nicholas Doiron, undecided; Alexa Efstathiou, Becker College; Hannah Fowler; Nashville State Community College; Duncan Frazer, work; Rand Frazer, Community College of Vermont; Andrew Gregory, Air Force; Tate Hurd, Northern Vermont University; Keanan Kelley, Currey College; Jayson Lyon, Central Maine Community College; Olga Malikowski, work; Tatyana Malikowski, work; Emily McMullen, Sarah Lawrence College; Benjamin Meagher, Wentworth Institute of Technology; Benjamin Millard, work; Vincent Moeykens, University of Vermont.
Lysle Nelson, Liberty University; Dakota Page, St. Michael’s College; Ethan Rhoad, University of Maine; Andrew Scott, Vermont Technical College; Izaiah Smith, gap year; Ian Snyder, gap year; Kaleb Spaulding, American Musical and Dramatic Academy; Adam Stapleton, Keene State College; Dylan Stillson, Morrisville (N.Y.) State College; Rylea Tetreault, University of New England; Jacob Tucker, Keene State College; Trevor Worrall, work; Terrence Ziccardi, University of New England.