Local youth earns Boys & Girls Club honor
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on March 26, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
T'Keya Banks, 16, smiles at Payton Craft, 6, while helping him with homework at the Boys & Girls Club of Fremont. Miss Banks, a junior at Charles B. Aycock High School, was recently named runner-up "Youth of the Year" for the clubs in Wayne and Johnston counties.
A 16-year-old junior at Charles B. Aycock High School has been named runner-up "Youth of the Year" for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Wayne/Johnston counties.
T'Keya Banks has been an active member of the Northern Wayne unit in Fremont for 10 years and is now a junior staff member.
She was recently chosen as runner-up from among the local club's four sites -- Goldsboro, Mount Olive, Fremont and Selma.
"Youth of the Year" for Wayne and Johnston counties is Elizabeth "Liz" Lynn, 17, a member of the Johnston County-Selma unit for eight years.
A student at Smithfield-Selma Senior High School, she will go on to compete against 30 other club members for the state Youth of the Year title April 17-18 in Greenville.
At the local level, she will be awarded a $2,000 scholarship from the Wayne/Johnston Counties Board of Directors through a grant from the Maytag Dependable Leader Award.
The initial competition included an essay, a speech and interviews.
In her essay, T'Keya, the youngest of six children, shared how she had always longed to do what her older brothers and sisters did, including joining the Boys & Girls Club.
"My siblings would come home every day excited about how they had just come from 'the club,'" she wrote. "They always told my mom about the fun things they had done. I would always be jealous because I was too young to attend. I was extremely happy on my sixth birthday because I could finally become a member of the club."
Throughout her years as a member, she said she watched as older youths "graduated" and new members would come in.
Despite momentary feelings of being unable to do some things as well as her peers, T'Keya said the experience of being at the Boys & Girls Club has taught her lessons that will last a lifetime.
"Learning respect brought me responsibility," she wrote. "With responsibility I learned leadership skills. With leadership I learned about honesty. Being honest taught me about worthiness and how important it was."
She called her club experience "amazing," and said even though the Fremont club may be smaller than some other units, the love is still there.
"My favorite quote that I always go by is, 'Never forget where you come from because that determines where you will go,'" she said.