Sheridan Rotary Club
When you were 15 years old, would your parents have let you move to France for a year to live with a bunch of strangers and go to school there? If you are like most of us, probably not. But the reverse is what happened to us here in Sheridan this past year. Let me fill you in on the details.
Clem Lekouma (left) shares a hug from Sheridan Rotary Youth Exchange Officer Connie Pearson. Clem will be returning to her home in France later this week after spending a year here in Sheridan. (Photo provided)
For the past 45 years, Sheridan Rotary has been involved with the Rotary Youth Exchange program. Every other year the club sponsors a foreign exchange student and we have had young people come to Sheridan from such faraway places as Taiwan, Australia, Norway, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina and several other countries. This past year we have been pleased to have a young lady from France be our exchange student.
Clemence Lekouma arrived in Sheridan on a very hot and very humid Tuesday last August, and wouldn’t you know it but Tuesday is our regular Rotary meeting night. On this particular Tuesday, our club was removing juniper bushes from around the Community Center and we were all surprised when our Youth Exchange Officer Connie Pearson showed up with a beautiful young lady in tow — our new exchange student. Connie had picked her up at the airport earlier and they had just about enough time to get to Sheridan, change into work clothes and show up for juniper duty at the park. Needless to say, this was Clem’s introduction to the club — a bunch of people sweating profusely, and grunting and groaning from all the heavy lifting and hauling.
It turned out that Clem was only 15 years old, soon to be 16, though, and a very willing participant in community and school activities. At school she quickly became a major player on the soccer team because they play a lot of that in France and she is very good at it. Later in the fall, believe it or not, she was her class’s princess candidate for Homecoming which usually means you are rather popular and well liked. And then basketball season came around and, while she had never played basketball before, she became a pretty good junior varsity team member. And this past spring she ran track for Sheridan. In the meantime, she kept her grades up and made the honor roll each semester and was inducted into the school honor society. So here we have a very accomplished young lady, both athletically and scholastically, who at a very young age came all the way from France and made quite an impression of all of us Sheridan folks.
We are now saying goodbye to Clem as she prepares to return to her family in France. As she departs, I have to ask if we made a lasting impression on her, or did she make the impression on us? I suspect it went both ways. No matter, the Sheridan Rotarians and our Sheridan community are very pleased she came to be with us and share her life with us. She will return to France the richer for her experience with us, and we will remember this fine young French woman who certainly impressed us with her maturity, her beauty, her bubbly personality and her heartfelt friendship. And not to mention her athletic ability. Merci beaucoup, and bon voyage, mademoiselle!