Gentle, Cooper, McDowell, and Burns Headline Awards Days
When senior day student Cooper Gentle was driving to campus Friday morning from the family home in East Brainerd, the last thing on his mind was that he might be winning the Grayson Medal, McCallie’s highest leadership award, three hours later.
Not that others didn’t see it as a possibility. After all, Gentle was a 4.0 student headed to Yale. He’d been a big contributor to multiple state titles in both football and wrestling, even wearing No. 17 his senior year in football, which the coaches award prior to each season to the player who best exemplifies leadership. He’s been a member of Keo-Kio, Student Council, and the Senate in multiple years.
“But I never thought about the Grayson,” he said. “I was always more focused on everyday tasks: sports, schoolwork, relationships. I thought it was a cool award to win. I just never saw myself winning it.”
But everyone else did, including Campbell Award winner Elijah Cooper. The Campbell goes to the Grayson runner-up. Said Elijah of Gentle’s win, “I voted for him for the Grayson. I wasn’t surprised at all when he won.”
It began a huge weekend for Gentle, whose 19th birthday was Saturday, which concluded with his senior prom and a candid admission about one talent he doesn’t possess. “I can’t dance,” he said. Then came Sunday, where he was recognized as a finalist for the local Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter’s Athlete of the Year Award.
Asked Sunday afternoon how he’d celebrate his big weekend, Gentle said, “I think we’re having a little family get-together tonight.”
For Elijah, a four-year boarding student, winning the Campbell seemed no less of a surprise than Gentle’s reaction to winning the Grayson.
“I wasn’t expecting it at all,” said the future Vanderbilt University enrollee. “When they were reading off things about the winner though, and they said something about ‘contributions to the music department,’ I did think, ‘Wow, wonder if that could be me.’”
Right on cue, Elijah had to cut short an interview on Sunday afternoon to make a final rehearsal for Sunday night’s Whirlwind in the Chapel.
In the past, McCallie has handed out three special awards above all others on Awards Day to three deserving seniors: the Grayson, the Campbell and the Walker Casey Award, which was actually announced earlier in the spring, that award having gone to day student Brooks Tremain this year. Given annually to the senior who best embodies the faith, character and positive influence of Walker Casey, a Nashville boarding student who had surgery to remove a brain tumor, returned to school and died in 1947 after being elected to the Student Council and inducted into Keo-Kio.
Said Tremain, whose older brother Jake won the Walker Casey in 2021, “It means the world to be considered worthy of this honor. It means even more to join the list of McCallie alumni, including my brother Jake, who have also been recipients. I am humbled and grateful for the example set for me by my family and the McCallie brotherhood that I’m privileged to be a part of.”
Added to those senior honors this year was the inaugural 1905 Award, which went to senior boarding student William McDowell. A native of Atlanta, McDowell is the grandson of Ed Michaels ‘60, who co-founded the Michaels-Dickson Scholarship program with fellow alum Alan Dickson ‘49.
“Winning this award means the world to me,” wrote McDowell in an email. “McCallie is a very special place to me and I’m honored to be selected for this award. I came into McCallie with the goal of leaving some sort of impact here on campus and I think this award is evidence of that impact that I left. I will be forever grateful for my time at McCallie and will take many skills with me to Georgia Tech next year.”
Another first-time award, the David Chatman Award for Brotherhood and Belonging, was actually presented to Anthony Xian by Chatman, ‘75, who was McCallie’s first Black graduate. He flew in from Pittsburgh to be a part of the ceremony.
There was one final award that was surely dear to Head of School Lee Burns’ heart. His mother, the remarkable Graham Burns, won the Libby Daughdrill Award, which is presented annually to honor and recognize a female member of the McCallie community who has made a significant and lasting impact on the life of the school and its students.
Few have touched McCallie and been touched by McCallie more than Burns, who graduated from Girls Preparatory School in 1957 before heading off to UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was voted outstanding woman student in both her junior and senior years. Born in 1939, she is one of the few people on the planet to have personally witnessed both the coronations of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 and King Charles in 2023. She is also unique in this: She is the wife of an alumnus, the daughter-in-law of a legendary associate head of school (Major Arthur Burns), mother to a trustee, a head of school, and multiple McCallie alumni and day campers, as well as being a Halloween-treat and Easter basket-giving grandmother to a third generation of McCallie men, in all nine different men whose McCallie connections span from 1916 to the present.
Noted Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham, a 1987 classmate of Lee Burns who occasionally tested Graham Burns’ patience, wrote: “There can be no more fitting recipient of this award. I often think of her as the Queen Mother of McCallie School. (She) is an invaluable part of the McCallie story. She has been wise, supportive, and forgiving; I will not go into specifics of why the last one is so important, but there were moments in the Age of Reagan when some members of the Class of 1987 might have tried her patience.”
Added former Board Chair Carter Newbold ‘84: “She has been watching over McCallie like a combination of protective mother and a guardian angel for more than half the life of the school. That’s true blue.”
The complete list of award winners is listed below.
Congratulations to all our winners:
Scholarly & Class Awards
The Clifford Barker Grayson Memorial Medal: Cooper Gentle
Cooper Gentle, Akhil Giddaluri, Nikhil Giddaluri, Grant Goins, Everett Guo, Peter Hu, Alex Jiang, Jake Jones, Tom Li, Chris Liu, Simon Masse, Aubrey Raff, Andrew Rice, Nik Shantha
Language & Humanities
Arthur L. Burns Modern Language Award: Aubrey Raff
John C. Johnson Spanish Award: Om Kapadia
John Harvey Kent Latin Medal: Jonathan Wu
Chinese Award: Willie Howard
German Award: Sabin Park
Strang Memorial English Award: Jackson Barger
Daughters of the Revolution History Award: Marco Ferri
Mathematics & Sciences
Michael M. Allison Memorial Geometry Award: William Arnold
James G. Ware Calculus Award: Om Kapadia
W.E. Brock Chemistry Award: A. J. Gupta
Biology Award for Excellence: Blaine Ellion
Wallace Purdy Physics Award: Alex Jiang
Bible
Dr. J.L. Bibb Memorial Bible Award: Luke Vollertsen
John Parks Bible Award: Sebastian Arsala
Arts & Publications
Senior Art Award: Jackson Barger
Gilbert Taliaferro Memorial Publications Award: Aubrey Raff, Sye Simmons
Scott Langley Filmmaking Award: Dominic Victor
Performing Arts & Creative Writing
Forensics Award (Mock Trial/Model UN): Akhil Giddaluri
T.F. & M.L. Walker Dramatics Award: Colin Deitrick
Jack Kinser Music Award: Ian Johnston
National School Choral Award: Elijah Cooper, Ellison Lord
Director’s Award for Band: Tanner Atwood, Luke Vollertsen
Class‑Level Excellence (Dr. T.E.P. Woods Medals)
9th Grade: Liam Tabibiazar, Niyam Tejani, Jack Sokohl
10th Grade: Luke Vollertsen
11th Grade: Henry Anderson, William Hammontree, Sawyer Hazlewood, Elijah Keylon, Thatcher Lehn, William Lundstrom
Cum Laude Inductees
Peyton Chang, Taylor Combs, Elijah Cooper, Charles Crim, Elliott Drapeau, Shiheng Fan, Matthew Gabbert, Calder Gant, Nathan Haun, Tristan Howard, Ian Jacobs, Luke Jones, Joseph Korenblit, William McDowell, Ryan Muxlow, Sabin Park, George Pfefferkorn, Scott Suh, Henry Toole, Brooks Tremain, Ernas Valauskas, Anthony Xian
Community, Faith & Service
Harry C. Milligan Memorial F.C.A. Award: Lucas Presley
J. Park McCallie Award: Lucas Presley
Don C. Peglar Award for Christian Leadership: Darius Otchere
Frederick Maddin McCallie Community Service Award: Ward Rose
David Chatman Award for Brotherhood & Belonging: Anthony Xian
Maurice Contor Award: Douglas Hake
Glenn Hanes Growth to Potential Award: Ryan Stanford
Senior Award for Service to Residential Life: Frank Crump, Jimbo Irwin
Athletics & Character
Bill Cherry Excellence in Athletics Award: Andrew Smith, Noah Wilson
Three‑Sport Athletic Award: Fischer French, Cooper Gentle, Parker Mixon
Coach Terry Evans Teammate Award: Henry Boyd, Alejandro Dominguez, Elliott Drapeau, Ryan Ellis, Lee Fiorello, Jaden Hudgins-Key, Garrison White
Scott Oliver Outdoor Award: Jake Jones, Joseph McGee
Tornado Service to Athletics Award: Douglas Hake, Dominic Victor
