Grand Rapids — By all appearances, Dayton Harris-Payne is your average happy, future-focused high school graduate.
He loves sports, music and video games. He has an easy smile and calm disposition, and there’s nothing in his bearing or demeanor to suggest he’s anything other than a proud, newly minted diploma-wielder, eager to move on to life’s next chapter.
But the truth is that, for the last few years, Dayton has been carrying a heavy mental and emotional weight. And there was a time, not long ago, when he wasn’t sure a diploma was in his future.
Dayton, who graduated in May from Grand Rapids Montessori Middle High School, had to contend with two major losses during his high school career. First his life was rocked by the shooting death of one of his closest friends. Then, midway through his senior year, he lost his grandmother to cancer.
“At the time, when I lost my friend, I thought it was over,” Dayton said. “I was like, I don’t want to go to school, I don’t want to do nothing no more.”
So how did he make it through?
With the help of the teachers and counselors at Montessori — a community he likens to a family.
‘Dayton is proof that strength is not about having an easy path, but about never giving up.’
— teacher Beth Gazella Falknor
“That’s how I feel school should be. They should be supporting you; you should be able to let them know how you feel,” he said.
‘My teachers cared’
At the tail end of Dayton’s sophomore year, one of his closest friends — someone he’d been tight with since around age 8 — was killed in an act of gun violence.
“I believe the streets caught up to him,” Dayton said. “He was killed — murdered — by another young person in the streets, which is crazy. That hurt me deep.”
When he learned about his friend’s death, Dayton said he had to fight the urge to seek revenge.
“I wanted to figure out who did it. I wanted to do the police’s job. I wanted to get the person who did that to him,” he said. “I felt like I was losing it.”
The whole school knew about the incident, and Dayton’s teachers and counselors, seeing the extent of his grief, rallied around him.
“I was breaking down about it, and my teachers cared,” Dayton said. “I had a lot of support. I feel like that’s what mainly kept my head on tight.”
Dayton’s choir teacher, Beth Gazella Falknor, was an especially big help.
“She gave me the most support, which really helped me to continue coming to school and not just push towards wanting to get revenge and all that,” he said. “I realized how much I had to lose. That’s what made me realize I should probably let the police do their job.”
He said he thought about his friend, too, whom he knew would not want him to perpetuate a cycle of violence.
“He probably wouldn’t want me to keep doing what I was doing,” Dayton said.
As if that wasn’t a big enough obstacle for a young person to overcome, Dayton had to grapple this year with the death of his grandmother, Delois Harris, who succumbed to liver cancer in January.
After regaining ground academically following the death of his friend, Dayton had desperately wanted Harris to be in attendance when he took his victory lap at graduation.
“She was the closest grandma I had, and died before I turned 18,” he said. “I feel I didn’t get to spend enough time with her before her passing.”
Again, it was his academic community that stepped up to help Dayton pull through. The school gave him some time off, and teachers and counselors even helped contribute to a gas fund to help him get back to his hometown of Gary, Indiana, to attend the funeral.
When he came back, he said his teachers were there for him, helping him catch up and stay on track to graduate.
Finding a Path Forward
Dayton knows he’ll never fully get over the loss of his friend, or his grandmother, but the acuteness of his grief is starting to lessen. He no longer feels like giving up, and he’s starting to envision a path forward.
What’s that path going to look like? Well, Dayton has a few ideas. He hopes to attend Grand Rapids Community College to study welding and plumbing, and he’s also interested in getting into real estate.
And even though his friend and his grandmother weren’t there to see him turn his tassel at graduation, he feels they were there in spirit.
“Both my mom and my dad got to see me get the diploma,” he said. “And the people I did lose, they helped me achieve it as well by watching over me and not (letting) me give up so easily.”
Gazella Falknor, the choir teacher whose support meant so much to Dayton, said he’s shown degrees of strength, determination and maturity uncommon among people so young.
She called him “the kind of student you never forget.”
“He has faced every challenge life has thrown at him. Despite pressure and grief, he continued to show up for his education, his family, his classmates, and his community with strength, humility, and heart,” Gazella Falknor said.
“Dayton is proof that strength is not about having an easy path, but about never giving up.”
She said getting to know Dayton has been one of the greatest privileges of her teaching career.
“I am so excited to see where his future will take him,” Gazella Falknor said.
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