After 30 Years, Family Bids Fond Farewell to DMPS
Allison Wilkerson graduates from Hoover High School later this month, the last of seven siblings to graduate during her family’s 30 year relationship with DMPS.
An email arrived in Superintendent Ahart’s inbox the other day that held special meaning as many people are counting the days until the Class of 2016 graduates. Larry and Rebecca Wilkerson wrote to bid a fond farewell to Des Moines Public Schools. For 30 consecutive years, their seven children have attended school and graduated from the district. On Saturday, May 28 their youngest daughter Allison will accept her diploma from Hoover High School before heading off to the University of Iowa.
The Wilkerson’s note gratitude that their children were “in a learning environment, not of affluence but of diversity of culture and vitality of spirit,” and pride that their “youngest five children graduated from the most diverse high school in the state of Iowa.” They conclude that “if it’s true that it take a village to raise a child, then our village did not let us down.”
With the Wilkerson’s permission, we are honored to share their letter below:
The Wilkerson Family: Allison, James, Samantha, Nicholas, Christopher, Rebecca and Larry (not pictured: Miles and Evan)
Our Friends at Des Moines Public Schools,
It is with bittersweet emotions that we are coming to the end of thirty years with Wilkerson children in the Des Moines Public Schools. Our long journey began in 1986, when Ronald Reagan was President and Madonna and Whitney Houston were only beginning their careers, before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the tragedy of 9/11. It is now ending with the graduation of our youngest child from Hoover High School at the end of this month.
We have had an unbroken string of 7 children in the DMPS system for these 30 years: Miles, Evan, James, Christopher, Nicholas, Samantha, and now our final graduate, Allison. They have been nurtured and challenged by many wonderful and gifted teachers, coaches, administration, and clerical workers. They have been in a learning environment, not of affluence but of diversity of culture and vitality of spirit. We, sometimes, would feel saddened and disturbed that our schools were not always able to buy paper and had to recycle old worksheets as test papers, or not have had up to the minute versions of textbooks not to mention we were unable to provide a $3 million football field for our team as some of the nearby suburban schools have. But, we soon learned that our children were receiving an even greater gift … a gift of being educated through the day-to-day experiences and shared hopes of many different types of students and teachers. We are proud that our children were able to develop and learn within an urban educational setting that brought them together with those of so many differing languages, colors, religions, viewpoints, and personalities. We are proud that our youngest five children graduated from the most diverse high school in the state of Iowa, Hoover High School, and have flourished because of the richness within the cultural environment and community cohesiveness that we have found within our school family.
We want to thank all of those involved in making our years with DMPS successful and enjoyable … and at times, extremely busy. We figured that we have filled out 91 fall registrations, and couldn’t even begin to count the number of fun nights, basketball practices, music programs, soccer games, and parent-teacher conferences that we have attended in those 30 years. We want to particularly thank a couple of special teachers that were instrumental in the development of our children’s lives. Randi Montag Peterson Weeks is the most amazing science teacher and we are very grateful for her dedication and hard work to make our children and their classmate’s lives enjoyable and enlightening. To the only teacher who actually had all five of our Hoover students (a couple of them more than once): Maureen Murphy, history teacher, who made our kids feel like they were with “mom” while in her classroom … and so many others at Hubbell, McKee, Woodlawn and Samuelson Elementary schools, Merrill and Meredith Middle schools, and Roosevelt, Hoover and Central Academy High schools … that are too numerous to mention: teachers, coaches, and helpers, and also fellow parents who contributed much time in the classroom, in fundraising roles, and in school activities. We were not always able to be at every function our kids participated in, because we were working parents, but we appreciate all the people our children learned from, whether in school, on the athletic field, or as friends outside of the school environment.
Thanks, again, to DMPS for 30 years of memories. If it’s true that it takes a village to raise a child, then our village did not let us down.
Respectfully,
Larry and Rebecca Wilkerson
