After uncertainty, WOHS senior Joey Grant will graduate with his classmates

WINTER GARDEN — After conversations between the family of West Orange High School senior Joey Grant and officials at that high school, Joey emerged with a path not only to walk but also to graduate with his classmates May 19 at the Amway Center in Orlando.

This was not the case a few weeks ago, when Joey, who has lost time at school from a series of health issues, received word from a guidance counselor that he was going to be a half-credit shy of graduating on time and would not be able to walk with his class.

“When they first told me that I wasn’t going to be walking, I was kind of upset and aggravated they waited this long to tell me,” Joey said. “Then just last minute, they were like, ‘Oh, you currently aren’t meeting grad requirements. You need a course that was lost earlier in your high-school years.’ Then when the meeting happened, it was kind of a relief, because I knew I was going to be able to complete what they were giving me.”

In a meeting with Principal Doug Szcinski, Joey learned that if he completed 12 hours of Algebra 2 to finish that course, he would be allowed to walk with his class.

“It didn’t affect my schedule at all,” Joey said. “It just recovered the credit that I missed in the 10th grade, supposedly.”

Joey’s father, Larry, also talked with Szcinski, who recreated a schedule for the last five weeks of this school year to put him on track for graduation.

“Doug did some digging and saw he had too many electives and not enough required courses,” Larry Grant said. “He had the English 2 recovery class he has to finish before the end of the year, get a D in the remaining classes on his schedule and he’ll not only walk but graduate. We were hoping he would just walk, but Doug did the due diligence to put him in line to graduate.  He already passed Algebra 2 with I think an 80 and has worked very hard the last couple weeks.”

Joey was initially short of credits because of school time lost to non-Hodgkin lymphoma around his pelvis, spleen, lungs and aorta, which doctors found while treating him for kidney stones. He missed ninth grade for more than a year of chemotherapy and then, after a brief remission period, he returned to the hospital in 10th grade for further chemotherapy.

“I played baseball with Joey and remember times where he would come straight from cancer treatment to make games and even practice,” fellow senior James Swope said.

He missed grades five to seven and some of eighth grade because of Juvenile Dermatomyositis, an autoimmune disease that starts with a rash and leads to muscle weakness and inflammation from the immune system attacking blood vessels throughout the body. He had kept up with school through Orange County Public Schools’ hospital homebound program.

Joey has been in remission since August and continues with checkups at University of Florida medical centers in Gainesville.

“But other than that, I’ve been clean,” he said. “I currently have a heart problem, but it’s not affecting me any way as of right now. I’m just living day by day.”

Even so, Joey of course plans to walk in less than two weeks, which is “the greatest feeling ever” to him based on his classmates’ support and his lack of participation from extended hospital stays, he said. Beyond that, he intends to enroll at Valencia College and then transfer to the University of Central Florida to study medicine and music.

“Medicine just because I’ve been around it so long that I have a good grasp of it already, and just knowing more about it is intriguing,” he said. “Music because music was there for me when nobody else could be there. There’s this one song by The Amity Affliction — they’re a metal band from Australia — called ‘Give It All,’ and I have their lyrics tattooed on the inside of my arm, and it says, ‘I give it all, and when I fall, I get up and give some more.’ I wake up and play that song, and it gets me through the day.”

Appreciation for Joey abounds among peers, who call him the definition of a warrior.

“He has overcome obstacles that most would see as impossible,” Swope said. “He has missed out on many memories due to sickness. … It is unnecessary for Joey to not be a part of a memory he will never forget.”

Contact Zak Kerr at [email protected].