TRIUMPH OVER TRAGEDY
Haiti quake survivor a BPS valedictorian
When Carmelissa Norbrun gives the valedictory address on June 8 for Boston Green Academy, it will mark the climax of a long journey that has brought her from the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere to the richest, and from tragedy to triumph.
The journey began on Jan. 12, 2010, while she and her two sisters were doing their homework as they sat on the steps of their home in Pernier, a village near Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
“Suddenly, the ground started rolling under my feet, and my mother grabbed me and my sisters,” said Norbrun, one of 38 Boston Public Schools class valedictorians honored yesterday at a luncheon at the Boston Harbor Hotel. “It wasn’t longer than 30 seconds.”
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake killed as many as 316,000 people and left another 1.5 million homeless.
Like many people, her family lived in a tent for months, during which lawlessness in parts of the country reigned.
At night, she could hear gunshots, and her father stayed awake to make sure his wife and children were safe.
“There was no electricity, and life became harder because people lost their jobs and then there was a cholera outbreak, which killed more people,” Norbrun said. “I kept trying to make sense of why this tragedy happened. It was really troubling, especially as a young child grappling with questions that could never be answered.”
After three months, Norbrun returned to school with her sisters, only to learn her best friend and a teacher had been killed in the earthquake, while another teacher lost her leg and would later die.
In September 2013, they finally left and joined relatives in Boston “in search of the American dream,” Norbrun said, “to go to college and be able to study anything I was passionate about, and to live a financially stable life.”
Although it took time to get used to the cold winters, she quickly found that she loved Boston.
“All my life before I came here, I was surrounded by people who looked like me,” Norbrun said. “But Boston was so diverse and so inclusive. It embraces people no matter where you come from.”
Already fluent in Haitian Creole and French, she learned English with the help of a caring ESL teacher at her first school here, the Community Academy of Science and Health in Dorchester, and by watching the Disney Channel and listening to song lyrics.
By the time she was in her senior year at Boston Green Academy in Brighton, Norbrun, 18, had a 5.0 weighted grade point average, earning her place as class valedictorian and a full scholarship to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where she plans to study science, with a tentative plan to go into research or medicine.
Her 19-year-old sister and schoolmate, Marlie Norbrun, is class salutatorian and has a full tuition scholarship to Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.
They will be the first members of their family to attend college.