LH student wins statewide America250 essay contest
A Laurel Highlands High School student has won a statewide essay contest reflecting on Pennsylvania’s role in American history.
Brady Sirochman, a sophomore at Laurel Highlands, was named the winning writer among ninth- and 10th-graders in U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick’s America250 Pennsylvania Youth Essay Contest.
Ronit Luthra, a junior at Downingtown High School East in Downingtown, Pa., was chosen as the top essay writer for 11th and 12th grades.
Sirochman wrote about Gen. George C. Marshall, the Uniontown native who organized the Allied victory in World War II and later authored the Marshall Plan. He opens his essay at the Uniontown intersection where Marshall’s statue sits across from a bronze soldier, and closes on what that pairing represents.
“Through his military career spanning service from the Philippines to Europe, and later his organization of the armed forces in World War II, we see his life as a personification of America’s willingness to defend liberty aggressively,” Sirochman wrote. “However, through his career post-war in the fields of diplomacy and government aid, we see his life as a personification of America’s willingness to defend liberty peacefully. George C. Marshall is a unification of these two necessities, as at America’s best, we understand the need for a soldier, as well as the need for a diplomat.”
Luthra wrote on George Westinghouse, the Pittsburgh inventor and industrialist who pioneered the commercial use of alternating current, which became the standard for electrical transmission in the U.S.
Dozens of submissions were blindly reviewed by a panel made up of McCormick, a Pennsylvania high school history teacher, and members of McCormick’s staff. McCormick chose the winning essays.
The essays are being entered into the Congressional Record, and both students met with McCormick in Washington, D.C.. where they were presented with American flags that flew over the Capitol on July 4.
“Pennsylvania was there at America’s founding and has been there at every turning point since,” McCormick, R-Pa., said in a statement. “Brady and Ronit captured that in their essays — and in the process showed me that the commonwealth is still producing the kind of people who will lead this country through its next 250 years. They inspire me. Their work belongs in the Congressional Record.”