Ciara Turner collects diploma for twin brother who died
With her family cheering from the audience, all of them wearing matching white “Turner Strong” T-shirts that they had made, Ciara Turner walked across the graduation stage June 7 and collected two high school diplomas.
One was for her. And one was for her twin brother, Jerame, whose picture she carried with her.
“I surprisingly did not cry,” said Ciara, who was worried she would as she put on her makeup that day. “I was just really excited.”
It was an emotional school year for the new Woodland Hills High School graduate, who navigated her time in 12th grade without her brother after he was shot and killed during their junior year.
It also was a year of milestones. She was this year’s Homecoming queen, she played for the last time on the school’s varsity girls’ basketball team and cheered her last with the cheerleading squad.
She spent her last nine months at Woodland Hills preparing for and applying to college. She acknowledged academics weren’t a top priority in the months after her brother died in November 2017.
She joined a group of other Woodland Hills students and
community members that over the past two years has advocated in Harrisburg and worked to address the community violence that has claimed the lives of a number of young people, in -cluding Jerame.
But during graduation — which her mom and the rest of her family worked hard to make extra special for her — she was able to focus on the future.
“It’s pretty exciting, not having to go back to school,” Ciara said. “It came really fast. My senior year went really fast.”
She will head to Slippery Rock University in the fall, where she plans to major in biology and ultimately become an orthodontist. Ciara hopes one day to have a mobile orthodontist truck she can use to help under-served children with their braces.
She considered attending college in North Carolina, but believes it was God’s plan for her to attend Slippery Rock, where her half-sister is a student and her childhood best friend, Trinity, plans to enroll after she graduates from Woodland Hills next year. Plus, she’s not too far away from her mother.
“I always say I’m not going to come back to Pittsburgh, but that might be a lie,” she said.
Ciara definitely struggled with “senioritis,” and was ready to be done with high school. She’s working two jobs this summer to save money before moving into her dorm at Slippery Rock.
But just because she was ready to leave doesn’t mean she doesn’t have fond memories of her time in the school district.
“The days after [graduation], I kind of got emotional,” Ciara said. “I loved it at Woodland Hills. I had a good time. I love it there. As much bad stuff, there was plenty of good stuff to even it out. People may not know about it.”