Two-and-a-half years ago, when Madilyn Burns was a sophomore in high school, a car accident put her in a coma for 10 days, damaging her short-term memory and causing her to have to relearn how to walk.
This year the senior at New Hope High School is graduating near the top of her class.
Burns was recognized along with 15 other area seniors at the Columbus Exchange Club’s annual Youth and A.C.E. (Accepting the Challenge of Excellence) Awards Luncheon, where she was awarded the A.C.E. Award of the Year, given to students who faced serious challenges during their high school careers.
“I was incredibly shocked and honored because everyone here was so deserving,” Burns said.
Exchange Club members also presented the overall Youth Award, which recognizes seniors with academic and leadership skills along with community service experience, to Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science senior Madison Wypyski.
Every year, the Exchange Club chooses the overall winners for each award from the winners at individual schools, both public and private. The seniors submit essays and the winners have the chance to compete for the regional Exchange Club prize.
School winners receive $100 and overall winners each receive $350.
Burns hits bottom, bounces back
Following Thursday’s ceremony, Burns talked a little more about the car accident on Highway 82 in October 2016 when she and three other New Hope teens were hospitalized. Burns, who spent her recovery at Blair Batson’s Children’s Hospital in Jackson, had a broken femur.
“I was supposed to go in to surgery and wake up hours after and be heading home the next day …” she remembered. “But once I went into surgery, I wasn’t waking up once I got out of surgery, and then I went into multiple seizures, so they took me back for all these scans.”
Doctors discovered Burns had an embolism damaging her brain.
“You don’t really know what being at the bottom is until you’re literally there,” she said. “You start everything over — learning the simplest things. My memory was a big struggle. A lot of people just focused on the outward, like me not being able to walk, or the physical injuries, but it was more of a struggle mentally for me than it was physically.”
Burns’ future plans now include becoming a physical therapist, she said, because of how much her own physical therapists helped her during her recovery.
“Even on my worst days, I could go to PT (and) they would just brighten my day and always give me hope that things would be OK,” she said.
Wypyski overcomes grief through service
Wypyski received the Youth Award because of her role in organizing a Light the Night Walk to raise money for research into leukemia and lymphoma, a project she took on after her 9-year-old cousin died of cancer two years ago.
“I was really kind of grief-stricken and looking for something to help me overcome that grief but also to kind of bring community spirit in an area that I thought was kind of lacking,” she said.
After doing some research, Wypyski came across the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society whose representatives suggested she organize a candlelight walk in Columbus to raise money for the organization. Wypyski worked on the project throughout her junior year and finally held the walk at the Riverwalk in September 2018. More than 100 people registered to participate, and the walk raised more than $4,000, she said.
“It was absolutely phenomenal, I’m actually working right now with corporate Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and some of my successors that I’ve recently named, to bring the walk back next year,” she said. “I’m just so happy that it’s become something that hopefully Columbus is going to adopt as an event.”
Wypyski plans to attend Tulane University with a double major in neuroscience and public health.
Other school winners for the A.C.E. Award included: Bobby Ray from Caledonia High School; Chelsey Robertson from Columbus Christian Academy; Hannah White from Columbus High School; Quin Tribble from Heritage Academy; Dev Jaiswal from MSMS; Karson Jaynes from Victory Christian Academy; and Dameion Conner from West Lowndes High School.
School winners of the Youth Awards included: Sophia Oswalt from Caledonia High School; Elizabeth Easterling from Columbus Christian Academy; Darrell Johnson from Columbus High School; Mary “Gigi” Fields from Heritage Academy; Syriah Harris from New Hope High School; Solomon Hill from Victory Christian Academy; and Macy Sparks from West Lowndes High School.
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