Woodland School in South Streator inducts 4 Hall of Famers

Woodland High School’s most recent class of Hall of Famers directed messages to students Friday during an assembly in the school’s gym.

This year’s inductees at the school south of Streator are Jan (Appel) Holmes, Kristine (Tina) Metzke, Michael Mallick and Jessica Wicks.

Even going to a small school, you can go out into the world and make huge contributions.”

—  Jan (Appel) Holmes, Woodland Hall of Fame inductee

Metzke asked students to raise their hands if they know what they want to be “when they grow up.” Some hands went up. She asked who doesn’t know what they want to be and more hands were raised, including some adults.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up,” she said.

Metzke now works for HSG/NASA, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, as the regulatory compliance and planning manager. In this role, she is responsible for leading a technical group providing direct support to NASA. Before working for NASA, she worked at Sea World in Orlando, Florida, Carus Chemical in La Salle and Laidlaw Environmental as a field chemist/project manager in Los Angeles.

She said that at each stop she said to herself “I have the best job ever,” but she continued to be open to new opportunities.

“I’ve worked coast to coast, from the seas below to the skies above, and I learned from my journey,” Metzke said.

Wicks told students that they have a unique opportunity attending a high school with an enrollment of about 160 students that will help them become future leaders.

Wicks offered four tips for students after they graduate and enter their careers, requesting the student body recite them out loud. Wicks told students “be somebody,” “take it one step at a time,” “how you make people feel is how they will remember you” and “you cannot make old friends.”

“Woodland prepared you,” said Wicks, who is commander of the Anaconda Pintler Search and Rescue that covers 741 square miles through the Beaverhead Deer Lodge National Forest and a stretch of the Continental Divide Trail. “Everybody is somebody. If you want things to happen here, you have to participate to make them happen or they won’t. That puts you into leadership roles.”

Mallick, who is a senior pastor at the Jeff Street Christian Church in Lincoln, told students that they have 86,400 seconds in every day and encouraged them to use every second wisely. He said he keeps a glass jar full of marbles, with a marble representing every month of the average lifespan of an American man. After each month of his life, he removes one of the marbles and reflects on the good and the bad of the past month, noticing the jar is getting closer to empty.

“Time is life,” he said. “You can’t replace it.”

The pastor, who is vice chairman of the board for Kuki Christian Mission in Imphal, India, and has traveled to Pinion, Haiti, as well as Imphal, India, to do mission work, also encouraged students to complete tasks that will have a lasting impact and told them to remember the worst of times can be the best of times.

Holmes, who operates her own private practice in Jan Holmes Counseling, specializing in mental health, addictions and shame resiliency, said Friday’s induction ceremony was a little bit about the inductees but more about the students in attendance.

“Your education foundation wants this to be engaging, to show that even going to a small school you can go out into the world and make huge contributions,” Holmes said.

She encouraged students to do their best, to get help when they need it and to not be afraid of failure.

“We each have something that makes us creative,” Holmes said. “Ask yourself what makes you come alive. That’s what the world needs most is people who come alive.

“Don’t ever give up on yourself.”

The inductees were treated to a ceremony with their family at Mona’s restaurant in Toluca on Friday night.