When Amir Iranmanesh takes the stage at this year’s Freedom High graduation ceremony to give his valedictorian speech, he won’t be thinking about his GPA, which he says is 9.14.
The 18-year-old will be remembering his late grandmother, the most influential person in his life.
“Everyone says this about their grandmas, but mine was the purest, most innocent person in the world,” says Amir, who describes himself as very family-oriented. “She was magical — every time I make a decision, I pause to consider what she would do.”
Amir believes his achievement would have been impossible without his parents, who emigrated from Iran before the 1979 revolution that threw their home country into chaos and raised their children to make their own decisions since they were young.
“My parents have always put a lot of trust in me, and gave me enough love to motivate me to want to do good things,” says Amir, who also credits his brother Eamon and sister Elhaam for their support.
Amir says he didn’t intentionally aim for the top rank in his class. He had a “passion for math” and wanted to learn as much of it as possible, so he began taking dual enrollment courses at Hillsborough Community College as soon as he could.
“Understanding math truly opens a whole new perspective on the world,” says Amir, who especially enjoyed algebra and calculus but also took extra courses in literature, public speaking, visual arts and computer science.
Amir’s strategy was to fill up his school days with homework and extracurricular activities and reserve Fridays and Saturdays for spending time with family and friends.
He competed for Freedom’s swim team for three years, and was a member of the school’s National Honor Society. He also served as an officer in multiple organizations at school, including the Rho Khappa National Social Studies Honor Society, Model United Nations and Future Business Leaders of America.
Amir helped others succeed in the classroom, too. He created a year-long math tutoring club staffed by student and teacher volunteers during their lunch hours, and also collected more than 3,500 book donations for the New Tampa Regional Library.
The future businessman currently serves as the treasurer of the student body-elected Executive Board of the HCC Dale Mabry Student Government Association. He manages a nearly $650,000 budget, votes on how to use the money during weekly board meetings and helps run general student body meetings on Tuesdays.
Although undecided at our press time where he will attend college, Amir says he plans to attend somewhere in Florida to remain close to his family.
Amir says he draws inspiration from his parents — father Ali, a civil engineer who owns a company with Amir’s mother Parvin, a former social worker.
“I plan to major in business so I can learn everything about how companies work, then invest in real estate once I have a steady income,” Amir says.
Amir traveled back to his native Iran last month for an extended vacation, exploring new cities and visiting family. He also took time to pay his respects at the grave sites of his three late grandparents and reflect on what he might do someday to alleviate the country’s crumbling economy.
“It’s upsetting to see people from my own city suffer and struggle to pay for food,” he says. “Whatever my journey is, it will surely consist of me giving back to my hometown.”
Freedom High’s 2019 graduation ceremony will be held at the Florida State Fairgrounds on U.S. 301 in Tampa on Thursday, May 30, at 9 a.m.
Nupur Lala bought some time by asking for it to be used in a sentence. A hint of a smile crossed her bespectacled face. Inside, she was bursting.
Meena Lala watched her 14-year-old daughter intently. There had been one scare during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but that was a few rounds back, on the word “poimenics,” maybe the only time she had gotten nervous.
But not now. Not on this word.
“L-O-G…”
Odalys Pritchard remembers the moment like it was yesterday. She was on the edge of her seat, watching her Benito Middle School eighth grader on ESPN trying to spell her way into history.
“I remember seeing the smile and the confidence when they gave her the word,” Pritchard says. “I knew she knew it.”
“…O-R-R…”
Right before she was given the final word, Nupur caught a glimpse of the event organizers preparing the trophy for the winner.
“It felt like a dream,” she says, and she wasted no time, quickly spelling the winning word.
“…H-E-A!”
When Nupur nailed the final word at the 76th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee on June 3, 1999, she jumped as high as she could two times, stopped to tuck her shoulder-length hair behind each ear, and jumped again, her yellow placard designating her as Speller No. 165 flailing about with her arms.
She grabbed the big trophy, raised it up to the sky and smiled the widest of smiles.
“It didn’t feel real,” says Nupur, now age 34. “I remember jumping up and down, and wondering ‘Is there going to be ground beneath me when I land?’”
***
Twenty years later, she remembers every detail, from the hero’s greeting she received at Tampa International Airport to receiving a key to the city to a slew of television cameras eager to record her every move.
There were banners declaring “Busch Gardens Spells Champ N-U-P-U-R” and local daily newspaper headlines calling her “The goddess of spelling.” The Neighborhood News (see pg. 36) called her “Super Nupur.”
New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner invited her to New York and gave her tickets to see “Phantom” on Broadway. Even Hooters put up a sign congratulating Nupur.
Her parents, Meena and Nupur’s father Parag, had her write the restaurant a thank-you letter.
“In hindsight, thinking back, it was extraordinary,” she says. “I’ll never forget the way that Tampa treated me.”
Nupur is greeted at Busch Gardens after her win.
However, when she felt the most famous, she says, is when her mother was driving her home to Hunter’s Green one day, and the guard at the gate asked if that was the Spelling Bee champ in the back seat.
Meena said yes, and he asked if she could hop out and say hi. This was a time before cell phones, so he didn’t want a picture. He just wanted to congratulate her and share his admiration for her accomplishment.
“That might have been the moment I felt really famous,” Nupur says.
***
It was just the beginning, though. In 2002, the documentary “Spellbound” was released, to critical acclaim. It followed Nupur and seven other Regional champions through the 1999 Scripps Spelling Bee competition. It earned $6-million and was nominated for an Oscar, giving Nupur a second round of fame.
She never thought she would always be the Spelling Bee champ from Benito Middle School in Tampa.
“I’d say it’s the one accomplishment in my life people are still interested in,” she says. “It has stayed with me more than anything I’ve done.”
There were times, she says, that fact chafed Nupur. To be defined by something you did at age 14, when you barely knew then who you even were, and then to have so much more expected of you as a result, was frustrating at times.
“I’ve had different feelings at different points in my life about all of it,” Nupur says. “Definitely early high school, early college, I felt that there were such massive expectations from winning the Spelling Bee at 14. I was still trying to figure out who I was and where I wanted to fit in in the world. It was very difficult.”
Today, however, Nupur has found her path. As a result, it is easier to embrace being noticed by someone who recognizes her name or face.
***
Nupur attended high school in Fayetteville, AR, where her family had moved just a few months after the Spelling Bee victory. She graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2007 with a B.S. degree in Brain Cognitive and Behavioral Science, and worked for three years at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) in Cambridge doing functional MRI research in cognitive neuroscience
She graduated with a Master’s degree in Cancer Biology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2015. And, after earning her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, she is now doing her residency in Neurology at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.
She hopes to do a fellowship in neuro-oncology, specifically Glioblastoma multiforme, the brain cancer that killed U.S. Senator John McCain.
***
Millions of students from all 50 states battle each year to make it to The Scripps National Spelling Bee, scheduled this year for Sunday-Friday, May 26-31, in Washington, D.C.
A Benito newsletter recognized Nupur, as well as her stiffest competition.
Nupur remembers the grind. She did her first spelling bee in Kaye Whitehurst’s seventh grade English class, merely to earn extra credit. She hadn’t even heard of the Scripps Spelling Bee, but once she discovered she was good at it, winning it became a goal.
Few remember that she actually made it to our nation’s capital for the first time as a seventh grader, when she was eliminated in the third round on the first day in 1998.
She was happy and proud, but she remembers while she was almost universally praised for her efforts, a classmate taunted her by reminding her that she didn’t win.
“I still remember that feeling. One moment you can be on top, and the next moment, you’re back to being a regular kid,” she says. “I didn’t realize how much it bothered me or how much I internalized that feeling. It fueled me for years.”
Nupur says it was Whitehurst, who had gone to D.C. with her student in 1998, and Pritchard, who is now interim deputy director for Hillsborough County’s Achievement Schools, that helped lift up her spirits.
“Teachers don’t even know the impact they make,” Nupur says. “I hope they read this and know they made a tremendous difference.”
***
With Meena (who spent many hours reading the practice words to her daughter), Whitehurst and Pritchard in her corner, Nupur was determined to get back to the National Spelling Bee in the eighth grade, and her goal was to make it to the televised portion of the event. She competed in a half dozen regional events to qualify, but says the stiffest competition was actually at Benito.
There were 249 competitors from around the country who survived Regionals and made it to Washington and 144 of them were eliminated on the first day.
But, not Nupur. She had made it to the televised portion on Day 2, and when she did, she says a strange calm came over her.
“I met my goal,” she remembers thinking. “It was still the most surreal moment of my life.”
Nupur’s parents moved to the U.S. from a small town in central India in 1984, where Parag worked as an engineering professor at Syracuse University in upstate New York, where Nupur was born. They moved to Tampa in 1997.
Nupur’s win marked a historic shift in the Spelling Bee. Since her win, 19 spellers of Indian descent have either been champion or co-champion.
Since her win, Nupur says she did not watch the Spelling Bee every year. She confesses to a rebellious period where she didn’t want to be the “goddess of spelling” anymore.
But, when she does watch it, she says she finds herself moved by the reactions of the winners, as well as her own memories.
“It was the culmination of a lot of hard work, by me and my family,” Nupur says. “I did something very few people have, and I will forever be grateful for that moment.”
So will those who knew her, like Pritchard. Nupur’s picture commemorating her win still hangs in the front office at Benito. And, for a long time, there was a large photo portrait of Nupur displayed at the Hillsborough County School Board boardroom auditorium, until the boardroom was renovated in 2017.
“It was always nice seeing that picture,” Pritchard says. “I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. Nupur was a shining star. There’s probably a lot of people who remember her vividly.”
Victoria (Tori) Bell is the third member of her family to earn class valedictorian honors at Wharton High.
For Wharton High’s 2019 Valedictorian, Victoria “Tori” Bell, being at the very top of her class runs in the family.
Both of Tori’s older brothers, Earl and Jared, were also Wharton valedictorians. Earl is now serving in the military, and Jared is earning his undergraduate degree in Applied Physiology and Kinesiology at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
“It was always assumed that I would follow in their footsteps, but I never felt forced into it,” says Tori, 17, who earned a 9.01 GPA at Wharton by completing several Advanced Placement STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses while simultaneously earning an Associate of Arts (A.A.) degree from Hillsborough Community College.
Tori, a National Merit Scholar and member of the Mu Alpha Theta Mathematics Honor Society and the Science National Honor Society, received fully-financed offers from Florida Gulf Coast University and the University of South Florida, but had her heart set on attending UF.
“My brothers both went there, and it’s always the school I wanted to go to,” said Tori, who was awarded the Benacquisto and Presidential Scholarship from UF, which will more than cover her full tuition and living expenses.
Tori says her recipe for success was, “consistency and determination with measured doses of goofing off,” which she did by playing video games, going to the gym, and enjoying lots of movies and TV shows by herself and with friends.
“I absolutely love stories,” said Tori, whose favorites include the Ender’s Game series, Marvel comic book movies, and the British drama hit “Killing Eve.”
Tori also is an avid reader who has whiled away many an afternoon at the bookstore, reading Gillian Flynn, Emily Danforth and Agatha Christie.
Her parents, Ed and Diana Bell, teach math and language arts at Wharton; however, her mother says that Tori is very self-sufficient and never asked either of them for help with homework.
Tori plans to major in Accounting, although she says that career choice is not set in stone, and plans to minor in English at UF. She’s also looking forward to living in Gainesville, closer to her brother Jared.
“My parents and family have been absolutely amazing, and I know I wouldn’t be here without them,” she said.
Salutatorian Also Headed To UF
Wharton’s salutatorian Ashley Joseph, who came in just behind Victoria with an 8.41 GPA, was, like the valedictorian, determined for success from the beginning.
“My parents taught me the importance of education from an early age,” says Ashley, 18, who took additional online and dual enrollment courses as a freshman and sophomore specifically to meet high school graduation requirements as soon as possible. “From there, I followed my passions and learned continuously.”
Ashley volunteers weekly in the emergency room at AdventHealth Tampa, interacting with patients and helping at the front desk, and works as a tutor at Kumon Math and Reading Center in New Tampa.
“My goal is to become a doctor,” says Ashley, who also will attend UF. “The ability to help others is extremely meaningful and rewarding (to me).”
Wharton High’s 2019 graduation ceremony will be held at the Florida State Fairgrounds on U.S. 301 in Tampa on Thursday, May 30, at 12:30 p.m.
When I first met Anass El-Omari and his wife Susana Herrera several months ago, I was hopeful that their plan to completely revamp not just the look of the clubhouse at Lexington Oaks Golf Club, but also the food served there would work out for them. After all, we have plenty of chain restaurants in Wesley Chapel, but we have so few non-chain, sit-down, mom-&-pop restaurants in our area with great food.
Well, if you haven’t tried Omari’s Grill & Bar at Lexington Oaks yet, I hope the pictures on this page and this short writeup will convince you to go check it out.
Anass, who is originally from Morocco, was trained at the world-renowned Cordon Bleu Institute in Paris, France, and just from the sauces he has been serving alone, his extensive training and experience is obvious.
Anass met Susana in her native Colombia, where she was working as a TV network news anchor for RCN Television (Radio Cadena Nacional) in the Colombian capital city of Bogota.
About two years ago, his varied business interests (including banking software) brought their family (they have two children together) from Colombia to Florida, first to the Grand Hampton community in New Tampa and eventually, to Wesley Chapel, where he ended up buying the Lexington Oaks golf course and restaurant, a change of ownership that took place about a year ago.
“We were planning to just buy a small vacation home in Epperson, because of the lagoon, but the kids loved it here, so this is now home.”
Oh Yeah, The Food!
The lunch and dinner menus at Omari’s Grill may be somewhat limited, but there’s no doubt that all of the dishes Jannah and I have sampled together so far have been outstanding — and Anass is always coming up with daily specials.
My favorite items on the dinner menu are the flounder almendrine, which I thought I had shown in my Nibbles & Bytes column before, and the Chef filet.
For only $14.99, the flounder is sautéed in a Mediterranean-style butter sauce, with large chunks of fresh tomatoes. The 6-oz. filet ($20.99) is super tender and served with a fresh basil and white wine cream sauce. It was served with two fresh asparagus spears and we also enjoyed a side of cheesy baked broccoli.
The Chef filet
I also love the fresh pear and brie cheese and the calamari appetizers and the Cajun chicken pasta with onions, peppers and salami in a semi-spicy Cajun cream sauce.
Although I can’t indulge in any of the multiple shrimp and lobster options on the menu because of my accursed shellfish allergy, Susana says her favorite dish on the menu is the lobster pasta, which is linguine served with generous chunks of lobster in a ginger cream sauce, with a touch of garlic and white wine.
The mahi-mahi, served with a mango salsa.
The special on our most recent visit was a super-thick cut of amazingly fresh mahi-mahi, served with a mango salsa that added a delicious touch of fruit without being overly sweet.
Although dinner currently is only served at Omari’s Grill Wednesday-Friday, it is open for lunch every day except Monday and the lunch menu features plenty of your favorite sandwiches, including Anass’ take on the classic Cuban, a Cajun chicken sandwich with bacon and cheese (of course), a Philly cheesesteak, classic BLT, as well as burgers, wings, a Buffalo chicken wrap and even shrimp tacos.
Strawberry cheesecake
I’ve only sampled Omari’s catering-style food for lunch when I’ve visited the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel, which meets for lunch at Omari’s every Wednesday at noon. Anass and Susana don’t only host the club, they’re also members and say they look forward to getting more involved with the Rotary’s service projects, especially since the Lexington Oaks golf course is getting ready to close for renovations for three months shortly after this issue reaches you.
“While the greens are being resurfaced,” says Anass, “we will be really focusing on the restaurant side. We’ll do a lot more menu specials and host more special events.”
Speaking of special events, Susana says that the Easter brunch held last month “completely sold out.” But, despite lots of requests, Anass says he will not repeat the brunch special for Mother’s Day, so he and Susana can spend her special day together.
“I haven’t had a day off in 243 days,” he says. “But, I’ll be thinking about new specials.”
Oh, and before I forget to mention it, you should always save room for dessert at Omari’s Grill. All of the desserts are homemade, including an authentically French creme brulee and the totally decadent New York-style cheese cake shown in the far right photo on this page, which is served with fresh strawberries and a chocolate sauce that has other ingredients Anass wouldn’t share with me. “The sauce is a secret,” he says with a smile.
Omari’s also caters to families with an affordable kids menu (nothing more than $5) and there is a beautiful covered patio that can seat about as many people as the inside dining area, which features a premium, full-liquor bar with very reasonable prices.
For more information about Omari’s Grill & Bar (26133 Lexington Oaks Blvd.), call (813) 907-7270 or visit LexingtonOaksGolf.com and please tell Anass and Susana I sent you!
Drew Falkowitz (Photo courtesy of Tacy Briggs-Troncoso)
HE PRETENDED to be typing on a laptop for the television cameras. He stood in the middle of the University of South Florida’s Marshall Center, a bright ray of sunshine cutting through his green graduation robe as an array of cameras click-click-click-clicked.
When he was asked to walk from one end to the other, he did, as more cameras followed him, photographing and filming his every move.
“It’s kind of hard to look natural doing this,” Drew Falkowitz said, sheepishly smiling.
On this day, though, it was the price of celebrity. In the center of campus, while his classmates studied while sipping from Starbucks cups, Drew was famous for a few hours — as he became the youngest graduate in the 63-year history of USF — and the story everyone wanted to tell.
The 16-year-old Tampa Palms resident, who graduated on May 3 with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Cellular & Molecular Biology — and still doesn’t have his driver’s license — found the whole experience even stranger than he had anticipated.
“I figured, eventually, there would be press that would be generated around this,” said Drew, adding, “I’m not a very public person. I like staying low and not being in the spotlight all the time and having my three years of college and no one’s even talked to me until now has definitely been a breath of fresh air.”
The son of Tracy and Steven Falkowitz, who have lived in Tampa Palms since 2000, Drew is a true wunderkind, although he doesn’t seem to think all that much of it.
He’s smart. Super smart. And always has been.
His trajectory to becoming USF’s youngest graduate is different from your average student, but not so different from other gifted children who simply had outgrown their peers the moment they entered pre-school.
Drew was 3 years old in this picture and already knew not only all of the U.S. states and their capitals, but also every U.S. President — in order — and could add, subtract and divide. (Photo courtesy of Tracy Falkowitz)
In Drew’s case, he started kindergarten at a Montessori school, and by the time he was in the first grade, they had moved him to the upper class, which was for grades 4-6.
He devoured course work, exhausting nearly everything available in middle school, and started taking high school classes online when he was a 9-year-old 6th grader being home schooled by Steven, who worked out of their house.
Steven remembers Drew completing workbooks faster than other kids his age finished coloring books. In fact, Steven says Drew’s first word, fittingly, was “book.”
When he went for his two-year-old pediatric check-up, Steven told the physician that Drew was already reading. The doctor scoffed, and then handed Drew a pamphlet about asthma to read aloud.
He did.
The doctor called in another doctor, because he couldn’t believe it, and Drew read another pamphlet for them.
“These kinds of things kept happening,” says Steven.
“At 20 months, he started reading, and no one had ever taught him how to read,” Tracy says. “We’re not entirely sure how he learned. He was writing essays by four years old. He learned division on a car ride to pre-school.”
Steven and Tracy knew they had something unique on their hands, but raising a boy genius isn’t exactly something found in the parenting manual. The learning took care of itself, and they knew their son was headed for a different academic track than most kids his age.
But, how would he develop socially and emotionally while being surrounded by older kids or, in the case of being home-schooled, by no kids?
Finding Help…In Reno?
They sought the help of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Reno, NV, that was formed in 1999 and says it “serves profoundly gifted people” ages 18 and under.
Steven says Drew was the last 4-year-old accepted there (the age limit has since been raised to 5). Davidson offers programs, summer camps in Reno, databases and resources for families raising gifted children.
Drew qualified for Davidson’s Young Scholars program, which assists parents and students with support, and he attended three summer camps.
“They talked us off ledges sometimes,” Steven says. “We reached out to them a number of times.”
Photo courtesy of Tacy Briggs-Troncoso
His parents got Drew involved in activities at the New Tampa Recreation Center and in their neighborhood. He joined his synagogue’s youth group, volunteered for the Joshua House and took part for a few summers at Camp Jenny, a “Mitzvah Corps” project that helps children from an impoverished Atlanta community learn.
He could have entered college at 10 or 11 years old, but Steven and Tracy resisted.
“What do you do with a 13-year-old college graduate?,” Tracy asks.
Even so, Drew bristles at the suggestion he was denied a “regular” education, or that he missed out on many of life’s rites of passage that come with attending middle and high school.
“I have a high school experience,” Drew says. “I have friends my own age. I have friends in college. I hang out and do basically the same things you do in high school or college…I would not give it up if it meant giving up everything else I have been able to do from skipping ahead…I wouldn’t give that up for a couple of parties.”
Drew says he is not that much different than any other teenager. He plays video games — “I can smoke anyone in Mario Kart 8” — and watches YouTube and Netflix and tweets.
In December, he took up the electric bass and has fallen in love with it.
While he said school was always boring to him until college, his last semester was his most gruelling. He took 18 credit hours of mostly 4000- level classes, had to complete a senior thesis and also had to conquer Bio Medical Physiology, which he says is the toughest class he has ever taken.
“It’s one of these classes you walk in and say, ‘There’s no way I’m getting an A in this class,’” says Drew, who, by the way, got an A.
In fact, he got all As his last semester, and boosted his overall USF grade point average to 3.93.
Maybe some of the credit should go to the rock band Metallica. To relieve stress, Drew spent his free time during the semester teaching himself how to play the instrumental version of the group’s “The Call of Ktulu” on his bass guitar.
“I set a goal to be able to play (it) and even bought an overdrive pedal so I could do it,” he says. “In five months, I managed to do it. It’s really a technical piece and one of the things I’m most proud of.”
Drew will start working on his Master’s degree in cancer research when he returns to Tampa after his internship at Yale University in New Haven, CT, where he will do autism serotonin research.
He says that after he earns his Ph.D. degree, he hopes to pursue a career in medical genetics, with a focus on mood disorders like schizophrenia, bipolarism and schizo-affective disorder. He says he finds the genetics behind the disorders “extremely interesting,” and he hopes it will provide him a chance to help people.
And, as uncomfortable as the attention for being the youngest-ever USF grad may have been, Drew will try to enjoy his moment in the spotlight. After all, he knows it won’t last forever.
Last year, 11-year-old William Maillis graduated from St. Petersburg College, earning his Associate degree, and transferred to USF to study astrophysics for his Bachelor’s degree.
“I guess I’ll have the title for a couple of years,” Drew says, chuckling, “then William is going to come in and steal my throne from me.”
