Radnor High Hall of Fame, Induction Day

Today I'll be inducted into the Radnor High Hall of Fame.

I type those words.  Sit back.  Wonder how that ever came to be.

I spent last evening in the home of Radnor graduates, parents, and administrators who are all working toward giving students the best education that can be gained.  I spent it talking to Nancy Carpenter Barnes, a fellow inductee, a well-known artist, the former president of the Barnes Foundation, and an Emmy-winning producer for public TV.  I'll spend today not just with Nancy, but with Lee Daniels, the film producer and director; John Galloway, the theologian; Christopher Goutman, the award-wining producer, director, and writer; Paul Michel, the federal judge who, among other things, served as an assistant prosecutor in the Watergate trial; Charles Ryan, the investment banker who created Russia's leading investment bank; and Chris Sydnor, the extraordinary athlete and coach.  The Egyptologist Henry George Fischer and the music writer and producer Andy Mark, both sadly deceased, will be remembered as well. 

The inductees will share this moment with the teachers and students of Radnor High, and I will be introduced by the very woman who inspired the smart, encouraging English teacher in my first young adult novel, Undercover.  She could not have been more than 25 back then.  She paired my reading of Juliet with a Romeo reading by my secret crush.  She read between weak, overwritten lines and saw the seeds of a writer.  I'll stand with her today.


There's more about this day here.  There is so much in my heart.  I don't even know who to thank.  But few honors have affected me in the way that today does.  I wish my mother were here to see this.