Wolman Awarded $10K for ‘Profile in Courage’ Essay

Ben Wolman, a freshman at Palisades High, won the national John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest for high school students last month. Wolman’s prize-winning essay describes the political courage of former Colorado State Senate President John Morse, who in March 2013 risked his career to lead the passage of new gun safety measures.

When choosing a subject for his essay, Wolman said the senator stood out because not many other politicians have truly risked their career for a cause in recent years.

“He fought for gun regulations and lost his career in a recall election, but despite the risk he still persisted in fighting for this cause because he believed it was the right thing to do,” Wolman said.

Although Wolman acknowledges that gun safety is an important issue, he was more captivated by Senator Morse’s political courage – a quality Wolman felt best reflected the late President Kennedy.

Selecting a subject that properly met the Kennedy standard of political courage was so important to Wolman that after spending several weeks researching and writing his initial essay on a different politician, he scrapped the entire project within days of the deadline only to refocus his efforts on Senator Morse and begin from scratch.

Wolman was honored during the May 4 Profile in Courage Award ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston and received a $10,000 award for his first-place essay.

“The ceremony was a really wonderful experience and the JFK Library treated me very well. [My family and I] had a private tour of the museum and the ceremony was really nice,” Wolman said.

More than 2,000 high school students submitted essays to the contest, which was narrowed down to the top 10. Wolman was in Santa Clara with the PaliHi robotics team competing for the state championship when he received the good news.

According to Esther Kohn, education specialist at the JFK Library, Wolman is the first freshman to win the award.