×
×
homepage logo

Zachery Gates receives citizen of the year award

By Staff | Feb 4, 2011

Zachery Gates

MARTINSBURG – Shepherdstown resident Zachery Gates, a senior student at Faith Christian Academy of Martinsburg, has been named the school’s Daughters of the American Revolution Good Citizen for the current year.

“The qualities of a good citizen include dependability, service, leadership, and patriotism,” said Nancy Myers, chairman of the DAR Good Citizens Committee for the William Henshaw Chapter, in a press release.

Gates is the son of Fred and Paula Gates of Shepherdstown. Upon graduation, he plans to major in engineering and hopes to attend the U.S. Naval Academy or the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

He has a superior academic record and has received honors in a variety of fields at the county, tri-county and state levels. He is in AP Physics, Honors Chemistry and Calculus classes. He is also an outstanding athlete who has concentrated in soccer and track and field. He has received many character and leadership awards and was inducted into the National Beta Society.

His extracurricular activities have included tutoring younger students, senior class secretary, Bible study leader, volunteer Adopt-A-Highway Pickup Trash program and for the Martinsburg Union Rescue Mission and others. He has been learning surveying skills, and has worked for many years on the family farm gaining a variety of agricultural, logging, woodworking and road construction skills.

Gates’ hobbies include music, drawing, photography, longbow shooting, canoeing, survival skills, blacksmithing, black powder hunting and skin diving.

As the school’s DAR Good Citizen, Gates became eligible to compete in the national DAR Good Citizen Scholarship Contest. This contest requires students to outline their high school and community activities, future plans and aspirations, extracurricular activities, and “why the four qualities of a DAR Good Citizen” are important. The student must write an essay on a topic that is not announced until the actual time of writing. This year’s topic was “Our American Heritage and Our Responsibility for Preserving It.” Gates’ winning entry has been submitted for judging.