Dreyfoos grad’s Pathfinder award for drama comes 35 years after dad won same prize

When Olivia Payson won the top prize for drama at this year’s Pathfinder High School Scholarship Awards, she took home the same honor her father, Chas Payson, won 35 years ago as a graduating senior at Benjamin.

By Sam Howard

JUPITER — Theater roots run deep in the Payson family.

Last month, Jupiter-area resident Olivia Payson won the top $4,000 scholarship in drama at the 2019 Pathfinder High School Scholarship Awards. It was the same honor her father, Chas Payson, won at the 1984 Pathfinder ceremony.

The Pathfinder Awards, organized by The Palm Beach Post, are presented each year to high school seniors in Palm Beach and Martin counties who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in 18 academic, vocational and athletic categories. The students are nominated by their schools.

“It’s been something really special for us,” said Olivia Payson, who graduated from Dreyfoos School of the Arts and plans to attend University of Oklahoma in the fall to earn a bachelor of fine arts in musical theater.

Her father, owner of Jupiter’s Echo Beach Studios, often regales her with stories of his involvement in shows, such as the Rodgers and Hammerstein hit “The King and I,” while growing up in Jupiter, Olivia Payson said. Although Chas Payson largely set aside his theater ambitions upon graduating from the Benjamin School 35 years ago, Olivia said he was a valuable critic while she rehearsed for college auditions in the family living room.

“My dad would say, ‘OK you’re a little pitchy here,’” Olivia Payson said. “It was great, he’d help me with that.”

His daughter’s win gave Chas Payson a chance to reflect on his own Pathfinder experience. His scholarship was worth about $2,500 and many students were unaware of the program, he said. When he was called into Benjamin’s library with other Pathfinder nominees, Chas Payson joked, “We all thought we were in trouble for something.”

Another difference: the talent pool among students today “is incredible,” he said. For him, theater was “kind of an excuse to goof off.” He still remembers his first role, playing a “bratty kid chased by a toy soldier” while in second grade. He can’t remember the name of the production at Stuart’s Barn Theatre, but recalled being drawn to the comedic aspect of the role.

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“I did it for laughs,” he said.

Acting has been a much more serious passion for his daughter, he said. Her first role was as Rope Twirler No. 1 in a production of “Annie Get Your Gun” at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre when she was 6. He has video footage of his daughter acting at home in her early childhood, and said her love for the stage was always apparent.

She was talented, too, her father said, and that made it even easier to support her. He calls her a “triple threat” because of her ability to sing, dance and act.

“If you have a talent for something, definitely why not pursue it?” Chas Payson said. “That was our belief all along.”

While theater president during her senior year at Dreyfoos, Olivia Payson said, she took part in productions of “Amélie,” “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and “Cry-Baby.”

Her love for theater has grown over the years and she hopes that passion will someday turn into a profession. After college, she plans to move to New York to audition for “as many shows as possible.”

“I loved being on stage and getting a chance to express myself. … As I’ve gotten older that love has matured and changed,” Olivia Payson said.

There seems to be a natural inclination toward the performing arts in her family, Olivia Payson said. Her 15-year-old sister Catherine is a dancer at Dreyfoos and one of her grandmothers loved to dance and play piano, she said.

“My mom (Suzanne Payson) always talks about how there must be something in the Payson family blood,” she said.

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Pathfinder Awards 2019: These cancer-fighting, charity-building teens didn’t wait for adulthood to think big

Dozens of the region’s most outstanding high school seniors were recognized Tuesday at the 2019 Pathfinder High School Scholarship Awards.

By Andrew Marra

WEST PALM BEACH — They organized voter-registration drives, collected shoes for impoverished children, researched new ways to detect lung damage and breast cancer.

They studied contamination in Palm Beach County’s waterways and designed computer programs for predicting sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico.

And they still haven’t graduated high school.

For their outsize achievements, dozens of the region’s most outstanding high school seniors were honored Tuesday at the 2019 Pathfinder High School Scholarship Awards, a pomp-filled, bass-thumping ceremony at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

The 36th annual event, organized by The Palm Beach Post, recognized 54 students for outstanding achievements in 18 categories, from drama and computer science to community involvement and literature.

The first-place winners were announced with a blast of pop music and shrieks of excitement from fellow students, then presented onstage with a trophy shaped as an astrolabe, an ancient tool used to navigate ships via the position of stars in the sky.

The honorees hailed from public and private high schools across Palm Beach and Martin counties, all united by an extraordinary passion for their particular interests.

Many winners were striking for the sheer precociousness of their achievements. Take Justin Wang, a Suncoast High School senior who took home the top award for mathematics.

He competes annually in math tournaments hosted by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has worked with Florida Atlantic University researchers on a computer model to forecast sea levels.

He proposed improvements to a computer algorithm that works to detect signs of breast cancer. And he has published research in four academic journals.

“His knowledge of the applications of mathematics surpasses that of any teenager I have ever worked with,” wrote Randal Oddi, the chair of Suncoast High’s mathematics department.

All the Pathfinder winners excelled in their studies, but none were merely excellent students. Winners distinguished themselves with the variety of their achievements and passions that extended beyond the classroom.

Natalie Navarrete, a Boca Raton High senior named the top winner in the academic excellence category, maintained straight A’s throughout high school and is poised to graduate at the top of her class.

In an essay, she wrote that she hopes to apply her wide range of interests to government policy-making in order “to craft and present unique solutions to the political problems facing our nation and the world today.”

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But Navarrete’s achievements were hardly limited to the classroom. At Boca Raton High, she was an award-winning member of the debate team and organized a club that registered students vote, then sent them into their communities to encourage others to vote.

Her commitment, her studiousness, her maturity and poise combine to make Navarrete “fearless and a born leader,” her teacher said.

“In a world where rendered resumes and constructed characters are commonplace, Natalie’s authenticity and humility is a gift,” Christina Hessing, a government and politics teacher at the school, wrote in a nominating letter.

For some of the evening’s winners, their passions took them beyond academics and into a world of service.

Joseph Rubsamen, a senior at Oxbridge Academy, visited Nicaragua as a boy and was shocked by the number of impoverished children and adults he saw who could not afford shoes.

Returning home, he started collecting used shoes and sneakers, and in 2014 he formed a non-profit organization, Shoes2You, to distribute them to people in need.

To date, Shoes2You has donated more than 15,000 pairs of shoes to needy people in Florida and four developing nations.

Along with his work at the nonprofit, Rubsamen organizes student volunteers to work at a local homeless shelter and has done research investigating the sources of bacterial fecal pollution in the county’s waterways.

Tuesday evening, he was awarded the top Pathfinder award for community involvement.

“Joseph is the kind of person who sincerely believes there is value when we all succeed,” wrote Teresa Thornton, an Oxbridge biology teacher, in a nominating letter.

All told, more than 500 students at nearly 50 high schools were nominated for the Pathfinder awards this year. The winners were selected by judges who reviewed nomination letters and applications and interviewed all the nominees.

Each of the 18 first-place winners receives a $4,000 scholarship, while second- and third-place winners receive scholarships worth $3,000 and $2,500, respectively.

Though there were just 18 first-place Pathfinder winners, just being among the more than 500 nominees was an honor in and of itself, Palm Beach Post Publisher Timothy Burke told the audience.

“You are officially part of a very select group of super scholars whose achievements amaze and inspire,” Burke said.

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