DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Courtney Montgomery got the lone diploma Friday as the first and only graduate of the Hospital School at Duke University Hospital.
The 18-year-old had a heart transplant in April 2011 and suffered her third rejection of the organ in November. She finished her first semester of her senior year at the Hospital School, then her second semester, taking classes in English, Spanish and math.
“First off, as the student body president and class clown, I want to welcome you to my high school graduation,” Montgomery said — perhaps the only time in her speech that tears didn’t well in her eyes.
At the ceremony, Jim Key, area superintendent of Durham Public Schools, declared Montgomery an official graduate, giving her permission to move the tassel on her cap from the right to the left.
“You may now turn your tassel, and it will remain over your heart for the remainder of your life,” he said.
The ceremony was as normal as it could be for a class of one, although the keynote speaker was a little highfalutin’ for a high school graduation — Kevin Sowers, president of Duke University Hospital. A saxophonist played the processional and recessional as Montgomery walked down and back up a side aisle of a hospital building, wearing a purple cap and gown. The school principal, Richard Lemke, gave her a diploma.
Teachers at the Hospital School, which opened in 1959 and is part of the Durham Public Schools, typically help young patients keep up with their classwork on a short-term basis. But when Montgomery became ill in November and went into cardiac arrest on the operating table, she faced the possibility of failing her classes at her regular school, said math teacher Amanda Headley.
By early December, Headley was taking her white board to Montgomery’s room, teaching her algebra. Eventually, Montgomery and her mother, Michelle Mescall, moved into an apartment near the hospital, allowing Montgomery to continue her classes at Duke and graduate on time.
“The thing that made it the hardest was knowing that my friends were continuing their senior year and making a lot of memories, and I was missing out on it,” Montgomery told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. “It was also hard because I was in the hospital. And I had to wake up and to a place I don’t even like to go when I have to be there. ”
Montgomery was 8 years old when she was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickened and hard-to-pump heart that’s the leading cause of sudden death in young athletes. She became so sick that she required home-schooling before getting the transplant.
She resisted the transplant at first, only agreeing to it after a social worker introduced her to a young man who had received a heart transplant at Duke a few months earlier. Montgomery and that young man, 20-year-old Josh Winstead, have dated since just a few months after that first meeting. He took her to his senior prom just before her surgery and she took him to hers.
Montgomery learned shortly after her transplant that the her new heart came from Jordan Benkert, a 17-year old from York, Pa., who had killed himself. His mother, Lisa, learned the recipient was a 16-year-old having her surgery at Duke and was able to find Montgomery and her mother through social media.
The families are friends now, and Mescall admits now that she once feared her daughter would kill herself.
“Courtney struggled with her diagnosis, and there were moments when it worried me she might do something impulsive to end it all and the pain,” Mescall said. “So it really hit home for me. It’s strengthened the bond between me and Lisa to lean on each other in those hard times.”
One of those hard times came last year, when Mescall called Benkert to say her son’s heart might not stay in Montgomery. Her daughter might need another transplant, Mescall told Benkert.
Benkert told Mescall to keep the faith, her son wasn’t going to let Montgomery down. “I told her that my son was very stubborn, that he had a very stubborn heart,” Benkert said. “As long as she did not give up, I knew my son would not give up for her.'”
Montgomery plans to take some time off, return to Asheville, and live what she hopes will be a normal life for a while. Then she plans to attend N.C. State University, although she hasn’t decided what she wants to do.
“There’s more to come from me,” she said in her graduation speech. “This is not going to be the last time you hear from me, I promise.”
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Martha Waggoner can be reached at http://twitter.com/mjwaggonernc
