Lights were low in the auditorium, allowing a blue and white glow emanating off the stage from letter cut-outs to highlight exactly the reason why parents and children were there.
“JOYA,” it read.
On Wednesday, May 20, the Lebanon Oregon Legacy Club (formerly known as the Lebanon Optimist Club) held its 27th annual Junior Outstanding Youth Award (JOYA) ceremony for 99 children of the Lebanon area.
“We’re the only club in the country that does it,” Legacy Club President Dale Hall said.
The award recognizes one student per school per month for, in short, being good.
The idea was planted by club member Joy Karo, who has since passed away.
“She wanted an award just for good kids. They don’t have to be athletic. They don’t have to be the brains,” Hall said. “She just wanted them to be recognized for having a positive attitude, being helpful, kind, courteous – you know, all the good qualities that kinda get overlooked sometimes.”
As emcee Randy Dobson began listing out the qualities of a JOYA student, kids in the audience from Green Acres and Cascade repeated each quality after him – an unexpected moment that seemed to make Dobson’s heart swell a little bit.
JOYA students are, they all said, happy, kind, thoughtful, caring, helpful and hope-filled, with giving hearts, creative minds and serving souls, and they contribute happiness, peace, productivity and safety.
Hall explained that most of the schools hold an assembly each month to formally honor the student, while other schools may do it quarterly, or whatever works best for them. And since it’s the teachers and staff who know their students best, then it is, of course, them who choose the honored student each month.
But it’s near the end of the school year when the Legacy Club, like a mother hen, gathers all its little baby chicks together for one last hoorah. That was this night.
City leaders and representatives – City Manager Ron Whitlatch, School District Supt. Jennifer Meckley, City Council President Michelle Steinhebel, Police Chief Frank Stevenson and Lebanon Fire District Board Member Wyatt King – stood on the stage to congratulate each child. Sometimes they had to bend down to reach the smaller hands for a handshake.
As each student was named, they crossed the stage, shook hands (or, if they were lucky, did a fist-bump) with the adults, and passed by the lighted JOYA marquee before descending the stairs and receiving a packet of SWAG.
Proud parents held their phone cameras high, and some of the kids seemed to lose their way back to their seats.
“I’ve been getting ‘thank yous’ from teachers about how much it means to the kids,” Hall said about the monthly award. “For some of the kids, it’s the best thing that’s happened to them.”
Hall remembered back to one of the more memorable times he presented the monthly JOYA award to a LHS student, back when he was relatively new to the club.
“I announced the kid and it got thunderous in there,” he said. “It was loud and I was lookin’ around, and there was this kid on one of those (knee) scooters. The kid was just absolutely beaming, I wanna just say joy and love; he was just there and he was obviously disgustingly happy.”
He was a special needs kid, someone whom every student at the high school apparently knew, given the applause he got. Determined, he used crutches to get onto the stage and receive his certificate.
“He was just beamin’! I kinda got emotional about it and I high-fived him,” Hall said. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to talk too long because I mighta broke down crying, so I handed the microphone back as soon as I could and kinda left.”
Then he called his wife. It was just that kind of moment.
“A year or two later, at the Rotary (Club), the princesses were there and one of them described that as one of her favorite moments in school.”
Like those good memories, the honor stays with a JOYA recipient through their senior year in high school, because every kid who has won the award at any point in their lives is eligible to apply for the JOYA scholarship.
After 27 years, there must be quite a large number of Lebanon’s JOYA kids spreading their wings across the world and, perhaps, even still here in Lebanon, to which Hall agreed, “I think they are all around us; we just don’t know it.”
