Day 304- Shayna Smith Beautiful Light Scholarship- First Annual

Tonight we drive over to Lakota West for the first time (for me anyway) since Shayna passed. Tywana and I are presenting the first annual scholarship award in Shayna’s name at the Senior Academic Award night.. It’s surreal as it was almost exactly a year ago that we made this drive with Shayna for the Freshman Awards and learned that Shayna was 16th in her class. I still remember her asking to go out for ice cream with her friend when it was over. Wow, how things change in a year.  

Olivia, who is Shayna’s friend who had the idea for the scholarship and Lisa, her mother, are there to present with us.  Shayna’s friends are some really special kids.

Tywana wrote a short speech she is going to deliver as part of the presentation. We’ve been to five of these awards nights now. This is our sixth. We went to four with Kayla and one with Shayna (two if you count her 8th grade awards). We know how they can drag on.  There are 26 scholarships to be presented and we’re about 20th on the list of presenters.  Unfortunately, not everyone decided to keep it short and sweet. So, we sit for about 45 minutes before it’s our turn to take the podium.  Tywana does a great job of getting the words out, getting to the last line before the tears overtake her. 

I’m really glad Olivia had this idea and that Lisa followed through on it.  It’s good to give something back to the school.  Our girls were only in the Lakota schools for a few years since we homeschooled them most of the time, but the Lakota students and staff were always great to both of them.