Laura Glesby Photo
Sahara Buonome-Scott: “Nothing gonna stop me now.”
As Sahara Buonome-Scott walked across the stage to accept her Wilbur Cross High School diploma, she kept in mind her older brother, Jericho, who never got the chance to do the same.
Just before Buonome-Scott started ninth grade, her 16-year-old brother was killed in a drive-by shooting just outside her house.
Buonome-Scott was one of 388 seniors to graduate from Cross on Friday night. During the ceremony, the graduates filed into chairs on the school’s athletic grounds as their families cheered from the bleachers.
Principal Edith Johnson gave opening remarks, and Salutatorian Sung Shil Johnson and Valedictorian Pablo Causa followed, their speeches peppered with jokes. The keynote speaker was Erik Clemons, CEO of Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology.
Soon, the hundreds of graduates lined up and stepped onto the stage, one by one, to receive their diplomas. After every student had been called, the class of 2019 — now graduates — broke out into cheers. Many threw their caps into the air. Relatives soon spilled out of the bleachers and into the field, meeting the graduates with hugs, flowers, and balloons.
The class of 2019.
Families celebrate in the bleachers.
After the ceremony, Buonome-Scott stood with her family, a bouquet of flowers in hand.
“When I entered high school, I had just lost my brother to gun violence,” she said. Her brother, Jericho Buonome-Scott, had achieved fame as a Little League pitching sensation. He was two years older than she was and also attended Wilbur-Cross.
One day, Jericho had been sitting in a car just outside his house in Fair Haven, at Exchange Street and Blatchley Avenue, when another car turned the corner and shot at him. Jericho was sixteen years old, a high school junior, when he died.
“I know he would be so proud,” Buonome-Scott said.
Buonome-Scott said she remembers feeling anxious about starting high school four years ago. But when she walked in on the first day of ninth grade, she received warm greetings from people who knew her brother.
“I was so welcomed by all the staff,” she said, singling out that day as her favorite memory from high school.
Once at Wilbur-Cross, Buonome-Scott delved into a wide variety of extracurricular activities at school, ranging from serving on the student council to playing two years of softball. One summer, she worked as an intern at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
She also participated in a program at Wilbur-Cross allowing her to take courses at local colleges. As a high school student, she took three college classes at Southern Connecticut State University and two at University of Connecticut, earning enough credits to start college next year as a sophomore.
She will attend SCSU in the fall, where she hopes to study nursing.
Buonome-Scott’s graduation cap popped out amongst the crowd — literally. She had turned it into a three-dimensional structure featuring photographs, fairy lights, books, a tiara, and a cardboard cutout of a woman singing. On the spines of the books, she had pasted a quote from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog: “Trials and tribulations, I’ve had my share. There ain’t nothing gonna stop me now, ‘cause I’m almost there.”
Buonome-Scott’s graduation cap.
On the back of her cap, a ribbon memorialized her brother and great-grandmother.
Sahara’s mom, Nicole Buonome-Scott, made sure to take dozens of photographs of her daughter with family and friends after the ceremony.
“I’m so excited,” she beamed. “I think the kid’s been through a lot with losing Jericho. But I know he’s looking down on her, so proud.”