Woodsdale Elementary Students Learn About ‘Firsts’
Woodsdale Elementary School first graders -- and kindergarten students who aspire to be first graders there next year -- learned all about "being a first" at what they do during a little person's discussion Thursday.
Ron Scott Jr., cultural diversity and community outreach director for the Wheeling YWCA, spoke to the students about how many "firsts" have been accomplished by people with connections to West Virginia and Wheeling.
At the end, he asked the students what they would like to be the first to do someday.
Scott told them about Chuck Yeager, the West Virginian who was the first person to fly faster than sound. He showed them photos of the Mother's Day Shrine in Grafton, where the first service honoring mothers took place.
Then he told them of Georgeanne Wells, a basketball player at West Virginia University who in 1984 was the first woman to dunk a basketball during an NCAA contest.
As part of Black History Month, Scott began to speak of notable happenings involving Black people who had ties closer to home in West Virginia and Wheeling.
Wheeling native Everett Lee is believed to be the first African American to conduct a professional grand opera in America, and the first black person to conduct a symphony on Broadway when he collaborated with Leonard Bernstein in the 1940s.
A decade later, Lee became the first African American to conduct a major orchestra in the South when he was asked to conduct the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky.
Tennis icon Arthur Ashe wasn't from Wheeling, but over his career he was the first Black tennis player to win at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Australian Open.
Yet, in his earlier days Ashe often wasn't permitted to play on courts because of his skin color, Scott explained. Oglebay Park in Wheeling was among the first to allow him to play on its courts, he said.
Marian Anderson was the first Black person to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. But she also holds the distinction of performing a concert in Wheeling at Madison Elementary School during the 1920s, Scott said. Money generated by the concert funded the Wheeling YWCA's Blue Triangle Program, which advocated for Black women and anti-segregation initiatives.
"I want you to know, you can be a first," he told the students. "You have the possibility of being first at something. Ask yourself, what can you be? What can you do? And what can you have?"
The students were especially engaged in the discussion, and were quick to tell Scott their aspirations. One young man wanted to break tumbling records, while another said he wanted to be the wide receiver with the most-ever receiving yards in the NFL. A young girl said she wanted to be the first person on Mars, while her classmate said he wanted to be the first to battle a monster.
"And you would be the first to see a monster, too, wouldn't you?" Scott asked him.