At 8:15 a.m. today, the 700 students at Tyrone Area High School sat in their first period classes and heard two members of Tyrone High\u2019s award winning speech team perform excerpts from Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream Speech\u201d, over the school\u2019s public address system.
\nIn his first year as chief administrator in the school, Tyrone\u2019s High School Principal Thomas Yoder had encouraged school students to celebrate the 22nd annual Martin Luther King Day. Yoder hoped students would mark the day, so that teenagers who grow up in a community without much ethnic variety – such as Tyrone – might more fully appreciate the challenges destined to evolve here as the I-99 highway nears completion, different people take up residence in the community, and Tyrone slowly and surely becomes more diverse.
\nTAHS Speech Coach Richard Merryman responded this way to Yoder\u2019s encouragement: \u201cEver since Tyrone High School Principal John Gaunt established Tyrone\u2019s Speech Team 95 years ago in 1913, the team often has tried to do what Mr. Yoder recently requested students to do for Martin Luther King Day 2008 – to introduce the entire student body to small excerpts from great speeches in American history. We commend Mr. Yoder for encouraging the speech team, and other school groups in his especially creative ways.\u201d
\nContinued Merryman, \u201cWhen making his request, Mr. Yoder fully realized that on Monday, January 21, 2008, students at Tyrone High were taking their English and Science mid-terms. Consequently, Tyrone\u2019s oratorical team had to present a great American speech in a small amount of time. Disciplined by strict time limits, the team chose to present excerpts from Martin Luther King\u2019s \u2018I Have a Dream Speech.\u2019 King originally delivered that speech at a 1963 Civil Rights march, in front of 50,000 people, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (how appropriate) in our nation\u2019s capitol.\u201d
\nHonoring the principal\u2019s request, Tyrone sophomores Nathan Kruis and Ryan Bressler presented excerpts from King\u2019s speech as \u201ca spoken duet\u201d over Tyrone High\u2019s public address system this morning. This third Monday of 2008 marked the anniversary of Martin Luther King Day – since an Act of Congress established it as a national holiday back in 1986.
\nMerryman chose sophomores Kruis and Bressler to deliver King\u2019s 1963 oration, because they both had demonstrated their speaking capabilities by winning first place awards at the Autumn Speech Convocation of the Central Pennsylvania Speech League, conducted on Thursday, November 15, 2007, at Williamsburg Area High School.
\nSpeech team newcomer Grant Gonder introduced sophomore speakers Nathan Kruis and Ryan Bressler over the public address system, as Tyrone students listened and sat in their first period classes, preparing to tackle mid-term exams.
\nBegan Gonder: \u201cGood morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a Monday full of mid-term exams. But students, don\u2019t remember mid-terms so hard that you forget that today marks the 22nd anniversary of Martin Luther King Monday. To help you remember, we have award winning sophomore speakers Nathan Kruis and Ryan Bressler on deck to present excerpts from Martin Luther King\u2019s \u2018I Have a Dream Speech.\u2019\u201d
\nAfter Gonder\u2019s introduction, Kruis and Bressler delivered these excerpts from King\u2019s memorable speech to the entire student body at Tyrone High:
\nFirst Speaker: I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and the frustrations of the moment – I still have a dream!
\nSecond Speaker: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self evident: That all people are created equal.
\nFirst Speaker: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation, where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
\nSecond Speaker: I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama will be transformed into a place where little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls, and walk together as sisters and brothers.
\nFirst Speaker: This will be the day, when all of God\u2019s Children will be able to sing with new meaning this song: \u201cMy country \u2018tis of thee\/sweet land of liberty\/of thee I sing\/land where my father\u2019s died\/land of the pilgrim\u2019s pride\/from every mountainside\/let freedom ring.\u201d
\nSecond Speaker: So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire!
\nFirst Speaker: Let freedom ring from the Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
\nSecond Speaker: Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
\nFirst Speaker: But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia!
\nSecond Speaker: Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi!
\nFirst Speaker: When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village, and every hamlet, and every state, and every city, we will be able to speed up that day.
\nSecond Speaker: That blessed day when all of God\u2019s children: Black men and white men, jews and gentiles, protestants and catholics, will be able to join hands and sing the words of that old negro spiritual:
\nBoth Voices: Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 8:15 a.m. today, the 700 students at Tyrone Area High School sat in their first period classes and heard two members of Tyrone High\u2019s award winning speech team perform excerpts from Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream Speech\u201d, over the school\u2019s public address system. In his first year as chief administrator in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area","category-excerpts-from-the-tyrone-daily-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}