Marblehead selects quotes to adorn high school entrance

MARBLEHEAD – A four-month process ended Thursday evening with the announcement that quotes from 20th Century Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and 19th Century Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson will be engraved on plaques at the entrance to Marblehead High.King’s "Intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education," was chosen in the education category and received 497 votes.Emerson’s "Do not go where the path may lead; instead go where there is no path and leave a trail," was chosen in the leadership category, with 518 votes.Each category on the ballot had two quotations to choose from. The runners-up were "The main hope of a nation lives in the proper education of its youth," Erasmus, and "The important thing is to never stop questioning," Albert Einstein. Each received 199 votes.The selection process has been closely followed in the media since Senior Class President Patrick Trout, Vice President Wes York, Secretary Amy Finn-Welch and Jessica Robbins visited the School Committee Oct. 16 to announce that their class gift would be plaques containing inspiring quotations to fill two blank spots at the school entrance.Robbins, Finn-Welch and Class Treasurer Ross Peterson announced the final results to the School Committee last night.The officers began with a list of 10 quotations. The School Committee deleted one and high school English classes added four more, and at last the officers weeded the list down to a ballot with two quotes in each of the two categories.Ballots were distributed in the school cafeteria at the first election Dec. 17 and about 200 votes were cast out of a potential 978 students and 154 teachers and staff – an 18 percent voter turnout.Ther students resolved to try again. Last Friday the ballots were distributed as students gathered in their homerooms at the end of the school day. The 717 voters comprise 63 percent of the high school. Ballots were kept in a locked safe in the high school office until they could be counted by the class officers.The quotes that didn’t make the cut included the words of educators John Dewey and Allan David Bloom, inspirational writer William Arthur Ward, pioneer scientist Galileo Galilei, spiritual leader Confucius, poet William Butler Yeats, political leaders Nelson Mandela and John F. Kennedy and educational activist Marian Wright Edelman.