Photography Class at Conestoga

Hi there,

I found your site after I saw a notification on Facebook that some high school classmates were attending a run in Jamie’s honor. I hadn’t thought of her in ages but a quick google search brought me here. Let me first extend my condolences. I am so very sorry for your loss. I barely new Jamie. If you’d asked her I doubt she would have remembered my name. She was a few years ahead of me in school. At T/E she was a cool 8th grader and at Conestoga she was a popular senior. I knew of her more than anything. We met in photography class in the autumn of 1994. I was a sophomore girl who was just returning to school after having been treated for cancer for the past 18 mos. It was a scary time for me. Starting high school is tough enough and I was doing it a year later than the rest of my class and after a year and a half of chemo and radiation and surgeries. I remember coming back to school and finding friendships had changed and cliques had shifted. I’d known many of my classmates since nursery school and all of sudden they seemed like strangers. Anyway, that’s a bit of back story to explain how nervous I was fall semester that year. Photography was my elective and the only name I even recognized was Jamie’s. Oh I was terrified. The only person I vaguely knew was a super cool soccer and lacrosse playing senior girl. I don’t 100% remember how we started talking – I think maybe she had to have surgery on her knee or something, regardless we started talking. We chatted in class and she’d smile at me in the halls and was just her nice and kind bubbly self. I wish I had something more to say, some concrete memory to share. She was just being herself and that meant so much to a shy, scared and slightly out of place me. I’ve always remembered that.

My best to all of the O’Briens and Kindems,
Ryan Carlton, Conestoga Class of 1997.
Ryan.carlton@gmail.com