News - Local News - Graduations

POSTED: Monday, Jun. 09, 2008

After a globe-trotting childhood, Blaine High student returns to native Texas

This is the fourth in a series of articles profiling seniors who are graduating from Whatcom County high schools.

BLAINE — Though high school senior Kieran Lyons has lived in Blaine for only three years, he will miss it when he leaves for Rice University in Texas.

The 18-year-old has grown to think of the border town as home, something that was important to him to feel before he graduates tonight.

“You want to leave high school feeling like you’re leaving a community you belong to,” he said. “Otherwise there’s not as much closure.” Lyons moved to Blaine sight unseen just before his sophomore year from Bolivia, where he and his family had lived for 4½ years. Lyons and his family also have lived in multiple locations around Lyon’s native Texas, and in Argentina.

The family moved around a lot because of his dad’s job as a natural resources consultant. That helped Lyons know that he wanted to leave Bolivia early in high school.

“I knew I wanted to spend the last years of high school in one place and in the U.S.,” he said.

While in Bolivia, Lyons attended an American school but wasn’t surrounded by many people from the U.S. In fact, he was the only student from the states in his grade most of the time.

Even though Bolivia is vastly different from the U.S. — Lyons and his family were treated as first-class citizens because of their nationality — moving back to the U.S. wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be.

“The transition back to the U.S. was not strange,” he said. “It was strange going to a small town like Blaine … where everyone has been together for 12 years.” Lyons slowly worked his way into the school crowd, joining the math and knowledge bowl teams. He also excelled in academics, earning perfect A’s in all his classes, which helped him earn the titles of National Merit Scholar and Washington Scholar.

His academic accomplishments can be attributed to his broad interest base — Lyons enjoys everything from charcoal drawing to reading to science to history.

“I can find something that interests me in most fields,” he said.

Lyons is excited to return to Texas, partially because it’s familiar to him and partially because he’s excited to be at Rice. Lyons’ grandfather attended the small Houston university for eight years and earned a doctorate degree.

But mostly he hopes college is where he finds his passion. He’s innovative and knows he wants to make a living out of combining two of his interests in a unique way. He just hasn’t figured out what interests to combine.

“I don’t need to find myself, I just need to find my goal,” he said.