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Essay winner overcome with emotion

Samantha Grady accepts $2,000 check from Ron Kauffman as first place winner of the Sentinel Patriot Club's 2015 Young Patriot Essay Contest.

By Bill Moss, Published: April 23, 2015

Sentinel Patriot Club leader Ron Kauffman got an unexpected response when he announced the winner of the organization's annual essay contest.

The winner, Samantha Grady, sprang from her chair and fled the room. After her mother caught her and calmed her nerves, Samantha returned to accept her $2,000 check. She won for writing the winning essay based on the Sentinel Patriot Club's prompt: What was Thomas Jefferson's proposed design for the seal of the United States and why did he choose it?

Home schooled students swept all but one of the five awards the club presented during a ceremony at Bay Breeze restaurant.

Samantha is home schooled in Mills River by her mother, Anjie Grady.

"First place was a runaway," Kauffman said. "Every judge on writing, answers, accuracy rated it first."

Abigail ConiguliaroAbigail ConiguliaroSecond place winner ($1,000) was Abigail Coniguliaro of Hendersonville, who is home schooled by her mother, Suzanne. Third place was a three-way tie. Winning checks for $300 were Larry Thomas, homeschooled by Tamara Thomas; Grayson Marshall, home schooled by Scott Clifton; and Gianna Gerard, a Henderson County Early College 10th grader whose history teacher is Matt Witt.

In her essay, Samantha wrote that Jefferson wanted the seal to represent both the government of the Israelites and the principles of the new nation — "that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent." The birth of America, Jefferson observed, "was accomplished sovereignly and miraculously by the hand of God as He similarly had done with ancient Israel."

In the end, Jefferson's "Seal of Fortitude," with its images of "the two strongest governments in history," was not adopted. But Jefferson's principles lived on, Samantha wrote, as "a seal over our hearts as Americans."