A family tradition of reading the newspaper together and engaging in intellectual debates has been a building block to making the DeLee children of McComb an academic success story.
Anthony and Wanda DeLee must be doing something right: Of their four children, son John is a student at West Point Academy and daughter Sarah is a freshman at Mississippi College and was Parklane Academy’s 2011 salutatorian.
And now, Anne Marie DeLee, a senior at Parklane Academy and the second youngest of the DeLee children, is a National Merit Finalist.
DeLee attributes her academic success to her parents being involved with her and her siblings, who also include her younger sister Rebecca, an eighth-grader at Parklane.
“It’s just that both parents are very smart. They encourage a lot of reading and we had family discussions about books we were reading or things we might have read together from a newspaper article,” Anne Marie said.
She described family dinners where her father read newspaper articles and asked critical questions about the subject matter, the style of writing or the author’s effectiveness.
“I grew up with Dad, who would be sitting there with the newspaper, initiating conversation through reading articles and asking questions,” she said.
She recalled the first time she learned about eminent domain.
“I was 9 years old. It was the article about landowners up in arms when the Nissan plant was being developed,” DeLee said. “I remember saying, ‘What’s eminent domain?’ “
DeLee said there were daily discussions about what she and her brother and sisters were learning in class.
“We were asked every day about what we learned in school. We couldn’t just say, ‘nothing,’ ” DeLee said.
As a National Merit Scholar, DeLee will have the choice to attend any university that participates in the program.
High school students enter the National Merit Program after making high scores on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, and by meeting participation requirements.
She visited the University of Mississippi campus during spring break and loved the old-town feel of Oxford.
More importantly, she said Ole Miss has a new program she wants to enter.
“It’s the Center for Manufacturing Excellence,” DeLee said, noting that students enrolled in the program are business and engineering majors who study a curriculum that focuses on both fields.
DeLee loves math and said she wants to put her emphasis on engineering.
“And I’m looking at a minor in a foreign language that could come into play in the future,” DeLee said.
She said success in school doesn’t happen overnight.
“Success in school is one of those things that you build up to every day,” she said. “You do little things every day like, do your homework, pay attention in class. It’s not like you can wake up one day and say, ‘I’m going to be smart.’ You have to pay attention and do the little things every day.”
Another common trait the DeLee children have is that the siblings all achieved the highest rank in Boy and Girl Scouts. John achieved Eagle Scout. Sarah and Anne Marie are both Girl Scout Gold Award recipients. Rebecca has received the second-highest ranking of Silver and is working quickly toward her Gold Award, Anne Marie said.
“This is my 13th year (in scouting),” Anne Marie said. “It teaches you to be involved in the community. I love it, and it’s taught me a lot and has definitely shaped me into the person I am today.”
Besides her service projects and activities with the Girl Scouts, Anne Marie is Parklane’s student body president. She plays the baritone euphonium in the marching band, is on the softball and tennis teams and is a member of the Quiz Bowl Team, which she proudly boasts won the Southwest Mississippi Community College Academic Bear Bowl this year.
Before beginning her life at the university, this summer Anne Marie is planning on taking a missions trip with the World Changers, an group of Christian students, to Puerto Rico to build cinder block homes.
