Congratulations to Hingham High Century Club Honorees!

May 13, 2019 by Carol Britton Meyer

Nearly 100 talented Hingham High students were honored at Thursday's 16th annual Century Club Awards Recognition Banquet at South Shore Country Club.

In 2003 members of the HHS Climate Committee came up with the idea of celebrating student academic achievement with a recognition banquet in a similar way that athletic achievements are celebrated and approached the Rotary Club of Hingham -- known for its enthusiastic support of the town's education program -- for support and funding.

The Rotary Club approved funding that same year to sponsor the event and in partnership with the Climate Committee, began planning the first banquet for May 2004. The event has become an annual tradition sponsored by the Rotary Club and Hingham High School.

The celebration honors those students from all four classes who perform to the highest standards based on an unweighted grade point average. (Unweighted GPAs are measured on a scale of 0 to 4.0 and do not take into account the difficulty of the courses.)

This celebration brings together students, families, and the larger community to honor the students' academic excellence.

Rotary Club President Carolyn Kennedy congratulated the honorees, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and further remarks by Kennedy and High School Principal Rick Swanson. Guest speaker was four-year Century Club member Anna Calame, a senior, followed by recognition of the honorees.

Anna shared stories from a recent week-long trip to the United Nations, where she served as a youth delegate to the 63rd Commission on the Status of Women. "Her message of hope and her insistence that 'the world is open to change' resonated with all of us,"  Swanson told the Hingham Anchor following the celebration. "As I said to everybody at the end of the night: Anna is right. The world really is open to change. And the students who earned membership in our Century Club are just the sort of people who can and will change the world for the better."

The annual Century Club dinner gives the HHS community and others an opportunity to honor some of the school's most accomplished and hardest-working students. "To get those hundred young people together in the same room at the same time was an uplifting experience for all of us," Swanson said.