New Haven Independent

William McCleese’s reading of his essay was a highlight of an emotional, uplifting segment of Monday’s night’s Board of Education meeting at Meadow Street school system headquarters.

Marking achievements ranging from statistics and math to poetry, art, spelling, and personal essay writing, awards were presented to some dozen remarkable New Haven Public School (NHPS) kids, some of them honoring potentially life-changing as well as life-saving achievements.

Perhaps the most moving moment of the evening came when McCleese — flanked in the photo at the top of this article by his uncle Charles Brown and his foster mother Mae Gibson Brown — stood and read, in a firm and candid voice, an essay that won first place out of 5,000 entrants in a statewide drug awareness essay competition sponsored by the Elks Lodge. Titled “Drug Abuse is Not Cool,” the three paragraphs, quoted below, brought more than 100 people to their feet in a standing ovation:

When I was born, my mom had a drug addiction problem. At the age of three, she gave me to my father, but he also had a drug problem. When I was four, a social worker came to pick me up, and sent me to fourteen different foster homes. I only liked one or two of them. I was sent to Washington, Connecticut, a residential school for kids when parents couldn’t take care of them.

A week before my tenth birthday, a lady named Mae Gibson Brown from New Haven came to talk with me. I asked her what does it feel like to be in a family? She said it feels good, and there are lots of people that love you, also you will not be alone. A few weeks later, she took me to live with her. August will be my fourth year living with the Brown family, and it is nice.

I know my parents loved me very much, and it was hard for them to give me up. I don’t ever want to use drugs because drugs took my birth parents from me.

Before the formal ceremony, Debbie Angell, the state chair of the Elks Association, embraced William’s foster mother, Mae Gibson Brown, and said, “You saved this boy’s life. You’re absolutely wonderful, and so is he.”

Then Brown told Angell a remarkable tale, that, eventually, led to William. Retired, after 40 years of teaching, Brown said she gave long thought of becoming a foster parent. “I looked at photographs of kids who needed a home,” she said, “through the Jewish agency in Woodbridge. I said to my son, ‘This one looks like he could be in our family.’ Then 16 months or so passed while I took the training and went through the process to qualify as a foster parent. One day a call came from Washington, Connecticut. They said, ‘We’d like to introduce you to one of our boys.’

“That boy turned out to be William, exactly the picture we had picked out from the book a year and a half before!”

He’s been in the Brown family for four years now. He received remarkable praise not only from them, but also from his principal at Celentano, Laura Russo (“William and his inspiring family make us all better people”). Charles Cheslock (on the far left in the photo) added appreciations that William could appreciate not only with his heart, but his feet: a box full of shiny new soccer balls and athletic equipment (the young man also excels as a midfielder for the New Haven Dynamite), to supplement $300 in savings bonds. “And,” added Cheslock, who is a past Exalted Ruler of the New Haven Elks Lodge No. 25, “William McCleese’s essay is going into our national competition as well.”

Other remarkable awardees of the evening included Renqing Wu and Adeline Mitchell, of Worthington Hooker School (pictured with their teacher Beth Klinger), eighth-graders who excelled in the NHPS’s Mathcounts competition. “Two years ago,” said Klinger, “Renqing arrived from China speaking no English. Not only is she now fluent, but she also excelled in math to the point where she won first place in the citywide competition.” Adeline, leader of the school’s math team, was one of 12 students scoring high enough to go on to the state competition. “I hope she’ll grow up to explore important new ideas in math,” said her proud teacher.

These two charming second-graders, Kressana McCaw and Melanie Boyd, also wowed the BOE crowd with a lengthy poem, completely memorized, and praising the importance of history. They were there honoring their principal, Ilene Tracey, of the King-Robinson School, who had qualified the school for the international baccalaureate program.

And in an evening brimming with stereotype-breaking student stars, doesn’t it seem appropriate to end with a strapping football player who’s also a fine poet? Hillhouse High School senior, Matt McNulty (in the photo with his creative writing teacher Joan Foran) will have a sonnet and other work published soon in the fourth edition of NHPS’s literary and visual arts journal, ArtFull.

The opening reception for the publication of the journal, along with the display of a hundred framed art works published in it will take place Thursday, from five to seven, at the City Hall atrium, and be hosted by Mayor John DeStefano. The Independent has not yet received word whether Mayor DeStefano, inspired by the students in the schools he’s been so instrumental in building, will be reciting any of his own poetry. You never know.

More on the evening’s shining awardees, along with some of Matt McNulty’s poems, are available on the NHPS website: nhps.net