Premier Graduate Headed for Marine Corps
Premier High School senior DeAmber Brown emotionally declared to the student body that Friday was the “greatest day of my life” as she accepted her high school diploma and prepared to enter the Marine Corps Intelligence Division.
Last year at this time Brown had been living at home with her parents in Mesquite.
Having been adopted, she had “found” her biological parents and had made the decision to get to know her biological mother and find her biological father before graduating from high school and entering the Marines.
“It didn’t go so well,” she explained to the Premier High School student body. “It just went downhill from there. Fourteen years later, all four kids had been taken from my mother, and she still hadn’t changed.
“Once I moved in with her I just kind of fell off, got into drugs, did the whole thing, and ended up in the hospital after being strangled,” Brown explained.
She lost high school credits due to absence. She couldn’t graduate, couldn’t enter the Marine Corps, and couldn’t fulfill her lifetime dreams.
After regaining her health, Brown came to Huntsville to meet and spend time with others of her biological family.
“I called my dad,” she explained, “and he moved me down here to meet the other side of my family.” Once again she found her home environment to be less than supportive, enduring abuse and a difficult home environment.
While here, Brown found Premier High School of Huntsville – a free public charter school that offered her a chance to do the work, to learn the material, and to obtain the four courses needed for graduation.
“I wanted to get myself in school,” she explained to her student body. “Without graduating I just felt like my whole future was gone. I didn’t have a backup plan.”
She enrolled and successfully completed three courses toward her diploma.
However, with only one course left 19-year-old Brown called Premier secretary Rosie Carpus to tell her that she would be withdrawing from school. It was too hard at home. After coming in to discuss her situation, a plan was devised to permit her to continue in school in spite of her home difficulties.
Although relatives continued with their plan and placed her on a bus to Dallas, law enforcement officials pulled the bus over a few miles later and removed her to a safe house where she could live until completing high school.
Her transcript was validated Friday, and she proudly graduated from Premier high School.
“I just want everybody to know that it is so worth it. I had to fight for my diploma, but having your diploma is the best thing you can do. Please, just don’t give up. I didn’t.”
