Jeremy Reesor always thought he would take up the family business and become a farmer.

Now 17 and this year’s highest-ranking graduate of Stouffville District Secondary School, he’s set to take a different path.

He’ll take his 95-per-cent average to the University of Waterloo in September and study science, with a specialty in biology. Longer term, he’s thinking medicine.

His dad, Richard, runs a farm on Warden Avenue with properties in southern Ontario, Georgia and Florida.

This week, Jeremy, his brother, Ben, and others were picking sweet corn, part of his annual summer job since age 13.

He’ll take a bank account full of scholarships to Waterloo, including a $4,000 Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation excellence award.

At the SDSS commencement, he pocketed the geography, English and Governor General awards, plus the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville and York Region District School Board prizes as top grad in the school.

With the Reesor family home less than a block from the new SDSS, he didn’t have far to lug them.

His marks from the first term include 95 in biology, 94 in English and 92 in functions. The second-term numbers have yet to be released, but he anticipates they will be higher.

“I really enjoyed SDSS because it was smaller and had the close-knit community, especially at the old building (that closed a year ago),” he said. “I guess you could say the same thing about this town.”

Ben, 19, is also at Waterloo studying science, but, with Jeremy in a first-year dormitory, the brothers won’t live together.

The family made two somewhat life-altering treks to Africa, for six months to Uganda when Jeremy was in Grade 7 and for a year to Kenya three years later.

Father, Richard, worked in the food industry there, naturally, while the boys’ mother, Carolyn, taught.

“Africa gave me a greater outlook on the world, a global perspective,”

Jeremy said. “It also got me interested in travel.”

A graduate of the region’s gifted program at William Berczy Elementary School in Markham, Jeremy’s marks shot up when he entered SDSS.

“I’m a decent-to-good student,” he said.

Homework?

“About an hour a night,” he said.

In his free time, he reads a lot, especially books, plays video games and listens to music.

Ontario scholars of 2008
The following graduated from SDSS this year with a plus-80 average:
Jeremy Reesor, Matthew Leger, Alexander Wideman, Liza Shmakova, James Beare, Kristina Nagel, Alanna Smith, Natalie Geiger, Mark Whittingstall, Jessie Dougall, Jaime Sparks, Dana Kenedy De Magyarpade, Jamie Gregory, Jennifer Fraser, Dennis O’Shaughnessy, James Potter, David Hoover, Krista Raymer, Stephanie Jupp,Michael Jeffrey, Christopher Lombardo, Brittany MacKenzie, Alex Mangotich, Rebecca Parry, Sarah Carr, Emma Drudge, Devin Pickering, Hailey Norris, Andrew Hudson, Marisa Greco, Marilla Hauselmann, Dylan Stewart, Shawn Zarudny, Jason Bell, Corey Brown, Gina Guzzo, Bruce Preston, Jesse Niekraszewicz, Adam Hassan, Christina LeBuffe, Spencer Garth, Jesse Shankland, John East, Vickie West, Ami Pearce, Kathryn McKendrick, Erin Schut, Keith Nichols, Michael Weidelich, Megan Tindall, John Reesor, Adam Prokop, Ryan Sweeney, Brandon King, Caitlin Wells, Daniel Coskun, Jonathan Stallan, Ben Reilly, Meghan Scavuzzo, Christopher Boake, Chelsea Trenouth, Ginny Mashinter, Stephen Jeschke and Solange Prokop.