It was just about time for Grove Hall’s Abdel Sahdala to get up from his seat at the Charlestown High School graduation on June 13 to accept his valedictorian medal and deliver the speech that he had spent so much time contemplating and writing as scores of proud parents sat waiting in the stands at the school’s athletic field.
After the salutatorian finished up her address to the class, Sahdala listened for his name to be called. Instead, he heard gunshots.
“You heard like a firework – a boom,” the Boston College-bound student said in a recent interview. “I thought that someone was playing with fireworks. Then it was boom, boom, boom in succession, and then panic set in. Everyone was crying and students were getting down in their seats. I got down, too, and went looking for my family. The shots kept going and then it stopped.”
While the gunshots were from a non-related encounter on the street next to the field, Sahdala and hundreds of other seniors – many from Dorchester and Mattapan – were robbed of their graduation exercises when the ceremony was shut down, and he never got to give his speech with its message about perseverance and continuing to seek success no matter what craziness might be going on in the background – like news about school shootings and gun issues that had even popped up in their own school that spring when two students were found with loaded guns.
“Thankfully no people were killed or shot,” added Sahdala. “Some people were hurt because of people stomping on each other and stampeding. It was terrible.”
Despite that shocking finish to their time at Charlestown High, Sahdala and other students defended their time at the school. He said it was a great experience for him and he learned so much there – as well as at the Crimson (Harvard University) Summer Academy each summer for the last four years.
“I wish that didn’t happen,” he said, “because we were already in a bad light because of the previous incidents when the two students were found with guns. I still think that if I had a kid, I would send him to Charlestown High.
“It’s like the saying not to judge a book by its cover. Because it happened, it doesn’t mean it’s the worst school. In my four years it’s the first time that ever happened – ever…Charlestown High gets so many bad reviews, but it’s not like what they say when you’re actually there.”
The 18-year-old Sahdala found his academic groove at Charlestown High after coming to the United States during the middle of seventh grade from the Dominican Republic. He started out at the Lila Frederick Pilot Middle School on Columbia Road, where he quickly became fluent in English and continued his love for math and computers.
“I was very content and there were a lot of really good teachers there,” he said. However, his plan to go to Boston Latin School (BLS) didn’t work out and he ended up at Charlestown High on a random assignment from the district.
“I had only been in the country one and a half years, and I had a lot of catching up to do,” he said. “I didn’t get accepted into BLS or any other school I applied to…I ended up at Charlestown.”
Though the one-hour commute from Grove Hall was tough, and Charlestown’s infamous five-story staircases weren’t always a welcome sight, he said he really settled at the school, participating in the Boys Honor Club, the Debate Club, and the Calculus Club.
This fall he’ll be at Boston College beginning his pursuit of a degree in computer science. He said his dad got him interested in computers as far back as the age of 6 when they were in the Dominican Republic. His dad worked in that field and had a whole room full of them.
“I was poking around on the computers at the age of 6,” he said. “I’m still really interested in technology. … It’s fun to see that everything we’re using now is the future and it’s really popular. The STEM fields are so hot.”
He said he’s motivated as a “coder” to implement the math he has learned and to be able to be a good writer as well.
“I’ve learned that the difference between a good coder and an average coder is in the ability to implement the math and information you’ve learned,” he said, noting that he feels it’s important for computer scientists to be able to write as well as they can perform math equations.
In addition to being very thankful to his parents, Bichara and Karina, Sahdala said he’s also thankful for his ability to be resilient, that even though he didn’t get to give his valedictorian speech, or to hear his name called as he walked across the stage, he’s thankful to be safe and headed in a positive direction.
Even so, Sahdala said he had been thinking about school shootings since he was in the eighth grade in 2018, when there were several in one day around the country. This year, when two students were found with loaded weapons in Charlestown High, he said it really hit home. The shooting near the graduation only hammered home the point he had hoped to make that day.
“I was actually going to talk about the situation with the two kids that were found with guns in my speech, and then this happened in addition,” he said.
“It was going to be about not letting incidents and circumstances or situations break you down; that we should keep standing up because you already worked this hard and spent four years and didn’t fall down,” he said.
“I wanted to tell them to keep working in life and don’t give up no matter what it is that happens around you.”
Those words, he said, applied as much before the graduation as they did after it.
