Parker Bohn graduated after his junior year from Dunkirk High School.

City of Dunkirk Mayor Kate Wdowiasz announced last week that Parker Bohn, an outstanding Dunkirk High School student and the top P-TECH student who graduated with honors after his junior year, has earned the 2025 Frank Gawronski Democratic Memorial Scholarship. Brilliance runs in his family as he coincidentally is the brother of the 2024 winner.

The scholarship is awarded annually by the City Democratic Committee before its annual summer picnic, which was Wednesday evening, Sept. 3, at the Brooks Pavilion at Point Gratiot. The scholarship is in honor of the late Gawronski, a long-serving public official and professional educator. Fund-raising to perpetuate the scholarship was done at the picnic this week.

Bohn is the youngest to fully graduate from Dunkirk schools, and he is now a freshman at SUNY Albany where he studies computer engineering with an emphasis on complex coding for high-level and highly popular computer gaming. His interests and talents are vast, and his essay on democracy in current America, to support his scholarship win, is both prescient and pensive. Some excerpts from his vision, the vision of our country’s emerging generation of leaders:

“I am living through an extremely volatile (and nearly comical) political climate. As a result, my opinions are equally divisive. When I gaze at the daily heartbreaks and injustices that the news contains, I feel frustrated. As a 16-year-old college student, it is hard to feel and act fully grown when I cannot express my opinions on the nation’s future in a way that could change something. I cannot vote.

“I don’t have enough money to make donations (not that it would be anything more than a drop in the bucket against corporate special interests). I can’t really do anything other than to speak. Maybe if I wasn’t so passionate about politics, this would not be a big issue. However, the handling of the economy, social issues, immigration, foreign relations, and the uber-rich, have left me upset with the running of our country.

“I would like to be an advocate. When I turn 18, I plan to join a political committee, helping with polling sites, and even going door to door for candidates. I only wish I could do that sooner. Many in my age group feel the same way. Really.

“Many young adults feel awful about their inability to take any sort of meaningful action. In accepting this scholarship, I am thankful to be just one step closer to what I want – the ability to influence my country’s future, even if only a little.”