If you read The Olympian this morning you may already know that Ian Stoner, a 2007 Charles Wright graduate from Olympia, has won a writing contest and $1,000 college scholarship from ScholarshipExperts.com. More than 10,000 students answered the contest question: “If you could get one ‘do-over’ in life, what would it be and why?” Stoner’s short essay was one of the five winners.

Stoner attends Prescott College in Arizona where he is majoring in education. Creighton King, one of his teachers at Charles Wright, describes him as “state-of-the-art human being… He is the only student I have ever taught who has read widely enough on his own to know the plays of Jean Paul Sartre as well as the novels of Jose Saramago.”

In Stephanie Glenn’s Japanese class, Stoner took on the position of serving tea for his senior project. “This meant lots of study, little old Japanese ladies teaching him how to dress and serve ceremonial tea in full kimono, and all of the polite Japanese language learning to go along with it,” says Glenn. “He has a tremendous amount of poise and confidence.”

Stoner’s winning essay:

It’s near the coast. In a space of sea-salt air and sailboats. It’s a cold day, cloudy. She sits facing inland. She doesn’t hear his approach. They embrace. The embrace is for his sake not hers, though she pretends. She is the first to release. They’re not old friends, though they did love. More than she’ll admit. Slowly, he releases, tracing the backs of her arms to her fingertips letting his hands fall useless into his pockets. They wander the streets. He misses her. They stop and order coffee. Black and midnight strong for him. Iced, blended and sugar-creamed for her. They continue on to the waterfront and sit. He tries to laugh at her jokes and confusion, letting her gossip and pretending to be interested, when really all he wants is to hold her quietly. They live disconnected lives, countless miles and lifetimes away. Their own past remains unspoken while those of strangers fill the air between them. He watches the stark lambency of the blue peter on a nearby ship. I have to go, she says. He nods. Another hurried embrace that she is the first to forget. A fog has set in. He lingers as her car recedes. Soon, the first rains of the season will come to wash away the dust and dirt off the streets. He soon begins to wish he had not let her leave. She crashed on her way home. Dead at seventeen.