RITE OF PASSAGE
Early graduation held for senior with terminal brain tumor
LOWER POTTSGOVE >> Like so many before it, Thursday’s graduation ceremony was held in the auditorium at Pottsgrove High School.
Like the ceremony that will be held in June, the entire Class of 2020 turned out to participate.
Each graduate was surrounded by friends, family and classmates. It featured music, a speech by the class president and high school principal, photos with family — and even a graduation cake.
But this graduation was singular in one very important respect.
Only one diploma was distributed.
It was held for the benefit of JaSaad Jamison, a member of the Class of 2020 who has been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and his presence at the June ceremony is not guaranteed.
So the district administration decided to guarantee that Jamison would get to graduate with all his classmates.
“We’re here to celebrate the life of someone who brings life to the rest of us,” said William Ziegler, principal at Pottsgrove High.
In the auditorium, sat the entire Class of 2020, along with Jamison’s family, friends and several school board members.
Ziegler said the first time he saw JaSaad, who is autistic, “he was dancing with his reflection outside the cafeteria, and so I went out and danced with him for a bit.”
JaSaad “brings a warmth and a joy to our school and if you happen to run into him, you’re going to walk away smiling,” said Ziegler. “We love you, we’re with you and we think you’re the best.”
Melissa DeStefano, JaSaad’s life skills teacher, said other students in her class “are drawn to JaSaad’s energy and his infectious smile. When we need to energize everyone in our class, we relied on JaSaad.”
DeStefano said he participated in a senior project with the rest of the class that colletively collected $243,000 in coupons sent to U.S. troops overseas.
Teagan Gallagher, president of Falcon Friends, a student group that spends time with life skills
students, said “it breaks my heart to hear all the things JaSaan has gone through this year.”
It’s been almost two years since JaSaad’s aggressive brain cancer was diagnosed, according to his father, Sadiki West.
He received radiation treatment and chemotherapy and is now being treated with a new kind of therapy which uses the body’s own immune system to fight the cancer, he said.
“We’re having some success,” he said of the treatment being given at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “But every time we knock it down, it shows up somewhere else.”
A GoFundMe page will be set up in the next few days to help with medical expenses.
Once very active, JaSaad is now confined to a wheelchair as he no longer has control over one side of his body, said his grandmother Ruth Jamison.
Adding to the family’s pain was the passing of JaSaad’s mother, JaPaula Anne Jamison, in August.
“She died in her sleep. She went to bed and never woke up,” Jamison said of her daughter.
JaSaad’s mother “was getting up at 4 a.m. to get him down to C.H.O.P by 6 in the morning and sometimes not getting home until 6 in the evening,” Jamison said of her late daughter, who also has a daughter with autism at home.
“He misses her,” Jamison said of her grandson. “And after she passed, he went back to school and he had a seizure, and he had never had one of those before.”
It’s hard for JaSaad, said West, “because he knows what’s happening, but he just can’t get the words out.”
Worse still, Jamison said her daughter and West, who had been together for 20 years, “were going to get married this year.”
“This ceremony today would have touched her heart,” Jamison said of her daughter.
It touched the hearts of those who were there.
“This is a special day that will be remembered by all who witnessed it,” said Colin Deckert, president of the Class of 2020.