“It seems to me that my father is always the bearer of bad news. He told me the other night to distance myself, to start saying my goodbyes, ‘There may not be anything that we can do,’ he says. If that is true, then I will have lost both my mother and my brother before I have the chance to turn 16,” Dawson County High School junior Jadin Cronan read as she stood in front of a crowd of Rotary Club members, peers and teachers on April 19. She was reading from her award-winning essay titled “An Open Letter to Stroke Personified,” which details how her 21-year-old brother has been victim of a series of strokes, and how she would gladly take on his suffering if it could spare him. “Mark Twain once said, ‘Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel it is stored in than to anything it is poured on.’ So I don’t want to be angry anymore. This letter is me refusing to let my anger and hatred of you blind me any longer than it already has,” Cronan continued. The crowd grew increasingly still as Cronan reached the end of her essay.