Emily Kirn wins Jim Cresson Memorial Scholarship
Emily Kirn, a recent graduate of Cape Henlopen High School, is the 2012 recipient of the Jim Cresson Scholarship, named for the late Cape Gazette reporter. Emily graduated as a member of the National Honor Society and has done Academic Challenge for English since the eighth grade and has taken AP classes and honors courses as well. In the future, she will be attending the Fashion Institute of Technology and majoring in Advertising and Marketing Communications, minoring in English with a focus on writing. She has been accepted into FIT’s Presidential Scholars Program (their honors program). Her extracurricular interests include collecting vinyl records, attending concerts, reading fashion blogs, writing, reading, and jogging.
Jim Cresson, a Sussex County native, was a journalist and photographer in Delaware. A Vietnam veteran, outdoorsman, artist, and musician, Jim had a great love for his country and nature, and a particular fondness for Native American history and culture. He spent the final years of his journalism career writing and taking photographs for the Cape Gazette before dying in an automobile accident in 2005.
The Jim Cresson Memorial Fund Scholarship recognizes a Sussex County senior who, through an essay contest focusing on interests that Jim Cresson shared, demonstrates some of the fine qualities that made up the character of Jim Cresson. Each year, Sussex County seniors are invited to apply for the scholarship in the second semester of their senior year.
Administered by the Greater Lewes Foundation, the Jim Cresson Memorial Fund was established by friends of Jim to perpetuate his memory. The following is Emily’s winning entry.
My Furry Family
As a child, I was one of those obnoxious kids who runs up to every person they see with a dog in public and asks, “Can I please pet your dog?” At the homes of my parents’ friends during social gatherings I deemed incredibly boring, I could inevitably be found in a corner somewhere playing with the cat or dog of the house. For years I wished I could volunteer at an animal shelter so as to improve the lives of homeless animals, and I filled out an application to volunteer at the SPCA the minute I turned eighteen. It should come as no surprise then, that my own pets have meant an immense amount to me throughout my life.
First, there was Annie. Annie was a beautiful Golden Retriever with a reddish coat and impeccable manners. My parents had adopted her several years before I was born and so having a dog in the house was a staple of life to me from day one. Being that she was, in fact, older than me, Annie was something of a maternal figure to me, not unlike Nana, the St. Bernard who cares for the Darling children in Peter Pan. The year I entered Kindergarten, Annie started to get sick, and the ignorance of youth shielded me from piecing together that something might be seriously wrong. I can still remember specifics of the day she died. My parents took her to the veterinarian, while I was left under the care of a family friend. I remember making “food” out of blue Play-Doh and being confused when my parents returned without Annie. When my mother informed me that Annie was put down due to cancer, I thought she was joking around. When I realized that our beloved dog was truly gone, I was heartbroken. It was the first time I had ever experienced the loss of one so dear to me.
The house felt empty without a canine family member, and so not even a year later, Hannah and Bayley entered our lives. They were brother and sister from the same litter, and were only six weeks old when we adopted them. While Annie had felt more like a “mother” to me, Hannah and Bayley quickly became my “siblings.” I often joked with friends at school that even though I was an only child, I knew what it felt like to have brothers and sisters. Comically enough, I did find myself jealous of the attention the dogs received from my parents from time to time and their idiosyncrasies would irritate me occasionally. Hannah and Bayley were also Golden Retrievers and their personalities were clear and distinct. Hannah was laughably goofy and terribly kind. I would frequently tell people when meeting her for the first time, “Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite, but she might lick you to death!” Bayley was a real character. He was easily envious of the attention Hannah or even I received from my parents and would make his envy known. He followed my mother around like a shadow and liked to act like a real “tough guy”—though he was repeatedly frightened by everyday sounds and occurrences (especially thunderstorms). Hannah and Bayley became as much of a fact of life as my parents in their ten years of living and I never even thought about a future without them.
Bayley was the first to succumb to the pitfalls of age and his illness put as much of a strain on our family as the illness of a person. When he eventually passed away, Hannah and I comforted each other. She seemed to take to being an “only child” exceptionally well and even though I missed Bayley, it was enjoyable to spend one-on-one time with Hannah. Sadly, we learned only a few months later that she too had cancer and I spent as much time with her as I possibly could until the day she also had to be put down.
With Hannah’s passing, it severely hit me that two of my family members were gone. The house felt excruciatingly empty and it was a little heartbreaking each time to come in the door and not have two joyful, slobbering faces greeting me. I started pestering my parents almost immediately for another dog, not to replace Hannah and Bayley—that could never be done—but to alleviate the loneliness and painful stillness of the house. This past September, that stillness was definitely blown to bits when Nala came into our lives.
She is the first dog we adopted from the SPCA and is an adorable black Labrador Retriever and German Shepherd mix. Nala was three months old and tiny enough to comfortably lie on my lap. I immediately felt maternal towards her, a significantly different feeling than I’d had towards the other dogs in my life. It was I that named her and slept on the couch with her the first few nights while getting up every hour or so to take her out. Nala promptly exhibited an enormous personality and I had a plethora of nicknames for her within weeks. She was almost pitifully clumsy, scarily intelligent and sentient for a dog, extremely concerned with the whereabouts of every person in the house, and constantly starved for attention.
Even now, Nala continues to develop more quirks. She has an addiction to Swedish Fish, somehow always knows when a dog is on the television and will always stop to watch it, and learns tricks amazingly fast if there’s a treat in it for her. Certainly, like every pet in my life so far, she occupies a very large space in my heart. I like knowing that as I head off to college in the fall, Nala will be of great comfort and company to my parents.
