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The Incredibles!

Meet ten inspiring local teens who challenge themselves to fulfill their dreams and become better people

The very literary Molly O’Neill (in blue), the strong speechmaker Caroline Kitchener, and the optimistic environmental experimenter Andrew Gagne, three of our ten influential young minds, trade ideas in the second-floor reference room at the Darien Library.

photographs by william taufic

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In our three towns, a teenager’s day is often packed with academic demands and after-school commitments that reach into the evening hours. Teens’ schedules can be mind-boggling. In the midst of it all, some zero in on an academic subject or a sport, hobby, talent or worthy cause and pursue it with tremendous passion and dedication. The results are remarkable. Each of the teens we’ve selected has broken new ground by striving for something big. While their specialties and interests are varied, they all have one quality in common: perseverance. They strive for excellence, they take risks and they never stop trying.

 

Caroline Kitchener, 17

Poised and confident, Caroline enjoys nothing more than donning a suit and heels, walking onto a stage and delivering an original speech in front of 250 or more people at a scholastic debate tournament. “You can pick your message and reach so many people,” says the New Canaan resident. “I love it.”

As cocaptain of the speech and debate team at the Convent of the Sacred Heart (CSH) in Greenwich, Caroline captured some twenty awards in the New York Catholic Forensic League, including from national competitions at Harvard, Yale and St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “She’s a star in original oratory,” says Paul Grisanti, the CSH coach of speech and debate. “A lot of kids are hesitant to write their own speeches, but not Caroline.”

After interning for Hillary Clinton in 2008, Caroline was inspired to present Clinton’s Beijing speech, “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights,” at the Catholic National Championships in Wisconsin. She placed an impressive seventh out of several hundred students and was amazed at the effect she had on the audience. “People came up to me afterward and said it changed their perception of women,” she says. “That’s powerful.”

Caroline has a keen interest in politics, with an eye toward a future in government. As a senior she’ll pursue an area of debate called “student congress,” in which students research the pros and cons of bills presented by all twenty schools in the league. “That she is willing to devote herself to this new category so strongly is quite exceptional and so typical of Caroline,” says Grisanti. “She is young America at its very best.”

Grisanti presides over a debate club that Caroline cofounded last year. The group meets once a week at lunch, when students argue passionately about issues ranging from gay marriage to tax cuts. “There’s a lot of give and take, it goes back and forth,” he says. “Caroline is very respectful of her friends who hold different opinions.”

Andrew Gagne, 17

A senior at Darien High School, Andrew enjoys his time in the lab. This year he will prepare a Power Point presentation, the culmination of his three-year independent study on cellulosic biofuel, a plant-based energy source drawn from bark and leaves, for the Darien Science Symposium. His experiments focus on converting sugars in plant matter to energy that be can used to power cars.

“Fifty years down the road, I see Americans pretty much off fossil fuels, using a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and biofuels from cellulose,” he says. “We could run half of America’s cars on fuels converted from cellulose. It’s widely available and doesn’t compete with the food supply, which makes it more favorable than corn-based ethanol. It would be nice if the U.S. could get a domestic, clean energy source.”

During his junior year, Andrew examined another potential energy source: lignin, an otherwise useless by-product of the decomposition of cellulose. An avid reader of scientific journals, Andrew discovered that a professor at Wesleyan University was doing similar lab work on lignin. He contacted her and landed a summer internship, a requirement for the independent study.

“Andrew is one of the most enthusiastic and academically gifted students in the program,” says David Lewis, his academic advisor at DHS. “He has shown tremendous potential to become a future leader in science.”

In the meantime, he’s making his own community a bit cleaner as a Boy Scout. For his Eagle project, Andrew organized twenty Scouts and their families on a 106-hour cleanup of Olsen Woods in Darien. “There was a dense flooding of trash washing down the river,” he says. “It was really gratifying to clean it all up.”

Molly O’Neill, 17

To amuse herself in the middle of physics class, Molly, a New Canaanite and senior at Greenwich Academy, often jots down a few lines of poetry. It’s a fun, creative outlet, but it also happens to be her strong suit. This spring she accepted her second Silver Award from the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards at Carnegie Hall, where she was honored with other top writers and artists from around the country.

“Molly is such a deep thinker,” says her academic advisor, Julia Guggenheimer. “The first time I read a poem of hers, I was blown away.” Since freshman year Molly has contributed to Daedalus, the school’s literary magazine. This fall, as coeditor, she will lead weekly meetings, where students first vote on which pieces to publish, then break into a writing workshop to generate new material.

Drawn to the classics, Molly takes classes such as AP Vergil, honors Latin and ancient Greek. This passion led to an independent study for which she plans to write an original play, adapted from Greek and Latin literature, with a female hero as a modern twist. “Molly can take a great idea and really develop and explore it,” says Guggenheimer. “There’s perseverance in her thinking.”

She also loves the stage and has been in at least one drama production every year, most recently as a member of the chorus in Les Miserables. “I love every thing about theater,” she says. “I’m so energized by it—even when late rehearsals mean I don’t start my homework until 10:30 p.m.” 

To relax and rejuvenate, Molly turns to running. She’s cocaptain of the cross-country team this fall and will also run track in the spring. “Running is just part of who I am,” she says. “I love how it’s a mental sport where you need to push yourself, but also get to contribute to a team. It’s a great group of girls, one of the most close-knit teams in our school.”