-Kean Honors Digna Marie Wheatley
Kean Honors Digna Marie Wheatley
By. Mr. Exclusive
All it took was for one person to stand up for what is right. One brave soul by the name of Digna Marie Wheatley made something unlikely happen: she got a gym built at Ivanna Eudora Kean High School.
From the time the school was built in 1971 as Nazareth Bay High School until 1994, Kean High School had no gym . Students always used to complain about how the gym classes were held in the cafeteria, and they wondered when the Department of Education was going to stop playing games and build a gym.
In 1988, Digna Marie Wheatley lead a peaceAll ful protest to the 25th Legislature of the Virgin Islands in an effort to build a new gym for I.E.K.H.S. “Digna Wheatley led a march of more than 1,200 people including teachers, students, and everybody else that wanted to take part in this outstanding march,” stated the Virgin Islands Daily News.
“The march was a success and the school was also awarded $600,000 for the construction of the gym, a bus shed and other educational development. http://www.keanvi.com/?PageName=LatestNews&Section=Spotlight&ItemID=19780&ISrc=School&Itype=Spotlight&SchoolID=3672
I was surprised to hear of how the school was back then. In the years before Ms. Wheatley graduated, everyone had to sit in the shade-less parking lot while the sun was still cooking. (Now that I’m here thinking about it, they had it pretty rough. )Her demands for school-funding equality was a success. Her class was also the only class in the history of Ivanna Eudora Kean to hold their graduation in the Reichhold Center of The Arts.
According to the Source, another graduate from the class of 1988, Carla Joseph said, “We just got sick and tired of being labeled a second-class high school.”
Because of Digna Wheatley’s awesomeness and determination, Ivanna Eudora kean High School’s gymnasium was built, renovated, renamed and reopened.
A ceremony to honor her was held on February 18, 2012. (Click the link below for details about the ceremony.)
According to the article in the St. Thomas Source “ In 2004, the 25th V.I. Legislature passed Act No. 6674, which made Saturday's renaming ceremony possible.
Nanyamka Farrelly said in her blog on Wordpress that Digna Wheatley graduated from the class of 1988. “Ms. Wheatley was an intelligent student, and made everything that she encountered work in her manner,” said Wheatley’s 12th grade English Teacher Tulip Fleming. “She was an outstanding student, a very excellent writer, and a well disciplined student.”
Surprisingly, despite being such a great student, Ms. Wheatley was threatened by the school administration, who warned her that she could get suspended and would not be able to graduate if she went on with the march. Her response to those threats was, “God is with me and I have to do what I have to do,”according to Farrelly. She was determined to accomplish her goal and that was all that mattered.
“Wheatley went on to to study at the University of Maryland School of Nursing and currently works for Johns Hopkins Health System as a risk manager. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in health administration and nursing from the University of Maryland,” according to The Source.
For all her hard work and determination, the Kean gym was is now called the Digna M. Wheatley Gymnasium.