The 2017 Boothbay Region High School National Honor Society honorees were inducted on Tuesday, May 23 in the BRHS gymnasium. The half hour ceremony followed a long established ritual, where four previously inducted members each light a candle representing one of the four requirements needed for a student to be considered for induction: Scholarship, service, character and leadership.

As parents, teachers and friends sat quietly in the audience, NHS member and student body president Kate Friant introduced each inductee, who then stood, walked across the stage, lit a candle representing the light of knowledge, signed their name in the NHS registry and rejoined their fellow NHS members back at their seats.

Jacob Leonard read “A Psalm to Life,” a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which includes the inspirational lines, “Lives of great men all remind us, We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time.”

Superintendent Eileen King chose to speak to the new NHS members about character. “It is what you are when no one is looking. Character is how you behave when public approval doesn't count. Character is an essential building block in each of our lives, as we decide to be good leaders, scholars, and provide good service to others,” she told students. At the close of her speech, she quoted poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

The new members include Kyle Ames, Carter Babcock, Page Brown, Evy Case, Summer Chamberlain, Connor Demmons, Erica Eames, Hailey Greenleaf, ReAnna Heino, Madeleine McLellan, Jackie McLoon, Sydney Meader, Sydney Mercier, Sienna Murray, Emma Rideout, JoAnna Shaw, Lillian Sherburne, Nicolas Simpson, Denise Stover and Lovely Uberita.