Keene High Senior Practices Diplomacy at National Youth Leadership Forum
FORUM
Keene Sentinel
Kenna Caprio
Boston University Washington News Service
April 10, 2008
WASHINGTON – TJ Ferguson came to the phone to talk about his time in Washington at the National Youth Leadership Forum on National Security, but only for a minute because he needed to go outside to help his parents with the maple sugaring.
A 17-year-old Keene High School senior from West Milan, Ferguson has a lot on his plate. Last October he took time away from classes, from baseball, from his parents’ businesses and from Interact, Rotary International’s youth club that does charity work, to attend the national security forum.
“They mailed me a letter that said ‘accepted’ and gave some information about the program…. I was interested in national security, and that’s exactly what this was on,” Ferguson said. “It just seemed like a fun thing to do…. I’ve always liked history.”
It was Ferguson’s mother, April Ferguson, who opened the letter from the forum. The Fergusons own Ferguson Roofing Co and Millbrook Farm Woodworks; Woodworks sells sheds and gazebos and taps for maple sugar.
“It was addressed to ‘the parents of’ and I read it and thought ‘This sounds great,’ ” April Ferguson said. “I wasn’t sure if T would want to pursue the program…20 minutes later he was like, ‘I would love to participate in that.’ He had been indicating…a lot of kids graduate from college and have a tough time getting jobs. He said, ‘Look at all these jobs available with homeland security…. It’s never going to end.’ ”
The National Youth Leadership Forum, founded in 1992 by Richard Rossi and Barbara Harris, who also founded the Congressional Youth Leadership Council in 1985, aims to provide students with an introduction to various career paths, with forums on law, medicine and national security.
“Basically the goal is just to give high-achieving high school students the opportunity to explore a career field more in depth than even just a high school class that deals with it,” said Laura Stevenson, director of media relations for the forums.
“This particular program was developed in the wake of the first Gulf War,” Stevenson said. “Increased interest in careers in the military dissipated over time…. We introduced intelligence and diplomacy fields. The forum used to be called Forum on Defense, Intelligence and Diplomacy.”
The week-long forum, funded by student tuition, stresses speakers, site explorations, seminars and strategy exercises related to national security, according to a forum fact sheet.
“They [students] find out realistically what they can expect,” Stevenson said. “It informs them enough so they can make a more educated decision about what they want to pursue in college in terms of courses and majors.”
At the national security forum students hear from high-profile public officials in the defense, intelligence and diplomatic fields. Past speakers have included Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Richard L. Armitage, deputy secretary of State; and George Tenet, former director of the CIA.
One of the speakers who made an impact on Ferguson worked at the Pentagon and was there on Sept. 11, 2001.
“One of the guys talked about his experience…. He talked about what happened there and process of recovery,” Ferguson said. “He said things tightened up a lot.”
The culmination of the program is a three to four-hour simulation of a national security crisis. According to Stevenson, the program tries to create a situation that is relevant to national security issues of the time and could really happen. The theme for the session that Ferguson attended in October was “crisis or crossroads: East meets West in the Congo.’
“We all got assigned different roles,” Ferguson said. “I was an ambassador. There were a bunch of countries that I suggested group together and make a bigger territory and ward off the people that were invading.”
Students are often recommended and nominated to the program by a teacher. The nomination process is anonymous. A student’s grade-point average must be over 3.0, and the SAT score also factors into the equation. Students may also mark a field that they are interested in on their standardized tests and, if their scores are high enough, be recommended to the program.
Ferguson qualified not only because of his grades and SAT scores but also because of his leadership.
“He’s a real goal setter,” said Tom Fowler, the Keene High School baseball coach. “I think TJ’s leadership abilities extend into him being a future success in the real world. He cares about other people.”
The summer after Ferguson’s freshman year of high school, while pitching in the state tournament, he was hit in the head by a baseball. His skull was fractured.
“He had to recover from that and get back up on that mound,” April Ferguson said. She marveled at her son’s strength and called the accident a “turning point.”
“He doesn’t talk about it and just carries on. He never carries it as a crutch. Still waters run deep…. He has a deep strength that he exhibits to us,” she said.
April Ferguson sees that same strength in her husband, TJ’s father, Ted Ferguson, a former police chief in West Milan.
“He juggled that with his roofing business and he did a great job,” April Ferguson said. “And I remember it takes a certain presence…I remember T and I were talking about it one time and I said, ‘You have the same kind of presence that Dad has…. You stand back and look…. Diplomats are like that.’ ”
Security work at U.S. embassies appeals to Ferguson, but he is not sure what career path he wants to pursue yet.
For now, he is trying to decide between criminal justice and business as a major when he attends Franklin Pierce University in the fall, and he is hard at work trying to lead his baseball team to a top spot in the state.
###
