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Student’s success continues on
By JOE HARLESS
| Article published on Thursday, April 5, 2007 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/040507_lle-01.jpg) |
| David Herrington, left, meets with Bill Clark, the associate state director of the Florida chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons. Herrington spent the summer of 2006 working with the AARP. |
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LARGO – From an outside perspective, David Herrington has led a life that few people see outside of inspirational movies. The kind of life where everything that could be thrown in the way of his success and his accomplishments have been all the more spectacular for it.
For a person who used to be a big introvert, Herrington has found all the attention very flattering.
“It was very humbling, but I never thought ‘why me?’” he said. “I saw the story as a transition in my life and I was willing to do this hoping it would bring encouragement to others.”
For a little while after he graduated Largo High School in 2002, the 23 year old became a small celebrity. After writing an essay about his life, the St. Petersburg Times featured him in a front-page article about graduation. Letters started pouring into his house, some offering educational opportunities and others from complete strangers just wanting to tell him how much his story meant to them.
Herrington went to live with his maternal grandparents when he was 6, after his father, William murdered his mother, Cathy, while he was at day care. He doesn’t have many memories of the event, or many others between the ages of 5 and 8, but things just got rougher after that.
Due to a physical abnormality that made his legs point inward in a 45-degree angle, doctors put leg braces on him and made him, as he says, “a regular Forrest Gump.” Then he was diagnosed with hyperhidrosis, making him sweat profusely. His classmates made fun of him and he began to withdraw into himself to escape.
But he found something there that made him want to push forward.
“Someone was always there (for me),” he said. “I have been given this life by other people.”
He joined the Pathfinders, a Boy Scout-like group involved with his Seventh-day Adventist Church. When the leg braces came off he began running, becoming a member of Largo’s cross country, swim, tennis and track teams. He served on the student council, the National Honor Society, the School Advisory Council and the Principal’s Advisory Council.
Herrington graduated with a 3.75 weighted GPA, more than 200 community service hours and a laundry list of academic honors. When the daily newspaper photographed him at graduation, he was almost weighed down with all of the medals and honors on his graduation gown.
Eventually the phone calls stopped coming after awhile and the media moved on, but five years later Herrington has added some very large accomplishments to his amazing success story.
“I didn’t want to get complacent. I wanted to keep doing things,” he said.
He spent some time in Tallahassee after a friend nominated him for the Florida Student Leadership Forum. Herrington’s experiences also include meeting presidential hopeful Barack Obama and spending time with some of the most promising young leaders in the country.
“I met with the cream of the crop of the young leaders in the country,” Herrington said. “I often wondered what I was doing there.”
He graduated college with a degree in economics and finance and spent last summer working with the American Association of Retired Persons. Right now Herrington is working on a master’s degree in gerontology, which he will complete sometime next spring or fall. After that, he plans on applying to the MBA program at the University of South Florida.
With the long term goal of working in public policy, Herrington is anxious to see where his experiences will lead him to yet.
“I’ve had these experiences that have shaped my character and brought encouragement to others,” he said. “I can’t wait to see the future and see how these experiences will help me.”
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Article published on Thursday, April 5, 2007
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