Spain Park's Voorhees, Parker named 2018 Finley Award winners for character

Hoover school officials today announced Katherine Voorhees as Spain Park High School’s winner of the 2018 Finley Award for character and Spain Park government teacher Todd Parker as the school district’s faculty winner.

Both are outstanding models of character that would have made former Berry High School coach Bob Finley proud, Spain Park Principal Larry Giangrosso said this morning as he announced the winners in a surprise ceremony in the school’s library.

Twenty-seven Spain Park seniors were nominated for the Finley Award this year, but Voorhees stood out from the rest, Giangrosso said.

“She’s different,” the principal said. “There’s something really different about her and her consistency and what she stands for and what she does.”

Spain Park’s Law Academy Director Craig Thompson wrote in a recommendation letter that Voorhees is the best student he has ever taught.

“She is a person of extraordinary integrity, poise, compassion, intelligence, humility,” Thompson wrote. “She embodies excellence. … Teachers and people so rarely encounter a person like Voorhees, and they are kind of overwhelmed by it. They don’t’ really know how to explain a person who always works hard, always does their best, always treats people with respect.”

Voorhees has a love of books that illuminates her inquisitive empathy, Thompson wrote.

“She wants to understand others on their own terms, not through her own preconceived notions,” he wrote. “Accordingly, she has that rare ability to see beyond herself. … It is also that empathy that makes her voice so extraordinary. She commands (in a quiet voice) that the viewpoints of others be taken seriously, and her capacity to see the world through others’ eyes forces people to consider contending viewpoints.”

Marcie Morris, a youth Sunday School teacher at St. Mark United Methodist Church, where Voorhees is a member, said in a recommendation letter that Voorhees has a true servant’s heart and shows great respect for authority.

“Katherine is the kind of person that, if asked to sweep the bathroom, she would do it and not even roll her eyes about it,” Morris wrote. “She knows that any good leader must first be a servant, and she exudes both of those qualities.”

Giangrosso described Voorhees’ academic excellence, noting she had a grade of 100 or higher in nearly every class the first semester this year. He joked she must have let senioritis get a grip on her because she had a 98 in Advanced Placement English.

Voorhees said she was thankful to receive the Finley Award but said she didn’t get it because of anything she has done, but rather the people in her life who have pushed her to be a good person — her family, her church and her peers at Spain Park.

Voorhees is in the Law Academy and choir at Spain Park and is a member of the Girl Up Club that raises money for a United Nations organization that works to empower adolescent girls around the world. When she graduates, she plans to attend Auburn University and major in English, she said.

Todd Parker

Parker said he has been in the education profession for nearly 30 years, including three years at Central Park Christian School, two years at Pelham High School, 12 years as dean of students and head basketball coach at John Carroll Catholic High School and 12 years at Spain Park High.

He teaches Advanced Placement government at Spain Park and is the coach of the Scholars Bowl team.

Giangrosso said Parker is as much like Finley as anyone he has ever encountered in the education profession.

Stanley Badio, a 2016 Spain Park graduate, said in a recommendation letter that Parker was the most influential teacher he had in high school because of his character and integrity.

He not only is concerned about students doing their work, but about the way in which they do it, Badio wrote. He always asks his students if they are becoming better students and better people, Badio said. Parker taught that good character is accomplished through hard work, and comes from commitment and knowing your values, Badio wrote, and it is impossible without respect for others and a sense of community.

Spain Park teacher Joe Carter, who also knew Parker when he was at John Carroll, said Parker balanced objective discipline with a forgiving nature that gave each student hope for a fresh start.

When he was dean of students, teachers would bombard his office with disruptive students, and Parker would handle each one with the same tough love, Carter wrote.

“He did not ever give up on a single person in all the years I was there — no matter how many visits to his office the student had incurred!" Carter wrote. "Even to the students whose actions eventually required expulsion, Todd consistently expressed hope and possibilities for the future.”

Carter said the students at Spain Park respect Parker greatly, as evidenced by the senior class year after year choosing him as a marshal at graduation.

Parker this morning said it’s an incredible honor to receive the Finley Award and said the Finley Award committee must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel when it chose him for this year’s faculty award. He said he’s thankful for the values that his family taught him and is grateful to be in a school that makes a deliberate effort to teach strong values to students.

“We all believe in the same things that are important — self-discipline, respect for others, perseverance and doing the best you can with the tools you have,” he said.

The Finley Committee also each year chooses a senior at Hoover High School to receive the Finley Award. This year’s winner, Kathryn Stubblefield, was announced in a senior class assembly Friday.

Stubblefield, Voorhees and Parker all will be honored at a more formal awards banquet at the Finley Center on March 22.