The many colors of Harold Love

            By Kailey Wilson
            Hawknews Writer
            How many colors does it take to get to the roots of Harold Love’s hair, the world may never know. Harold is an eccentric, yet fairly reserved, Kenny Lake junior who has an interesting and very surprising life; his life is anything but boring.
            Harold came to the Copper Valley when he was in seventh grade. Before he came to Kenny Lake, however, Harold attended Oceanview Middle school in Anchorage, but was born somewhere in Minnesota.  He is currently living in Chitina and has 16 sisters and four brothers, both birth and adopted combined. Harold’s move to Kenny Lake was very positive; in fact, more than once he expressed with many smiles his love for Kenny Lake School. When asked why he liked it here so much Harold replied, “I kind of like it cause there’s fewer students and you get more help here than in a bigger school.”
        School and life were not glamorous for Harold prior to his move. He came from an abusive birth father and was downgraded in his old school by peers who thought he had no potential to succeed. “Going to school when I was really little was really hard because people told me I couldn’t pass school because I was somehow mental. Over the years I kind of gave up on school and when I moved to Kenny Lake and did school, I learned that I was really smart and I could pass school.”
            Despite having such a challenging life, Harold has moved past all adversity and actually uses it to motivate his desire to succeed. He remains so positive and has developed huge goals for his life. Harold loves to write and after he graduates, he plans to go to college and then travel the world writing about different cultures. Harold’s motivation to succeed is inspiring. “I want just to prove to people that I could, and I also want to because my family never completed college or high school. And I want to be the first one in my family to complete college.”
            Harold’s adversity has also fueled an interest in poetry. He explained that he loves to write about his life even though he was once discouraged from sharing the hard memories . He shared two of his powerful poems. It is his way of expressing these feelings, and it is a way for him to alleviate the pain that he once felt. “I was told to be quiet about my life so I just started writing poetry about my life and what I’ve been through,” says Harold. Below is one of  Harold’s poems.

            A man walks the line of fear,
            This man’s been through things and seen things
            That no one wants to see or hear.
            The pain he’s been through,
            Seeing his father hit his mother.
            Seeing the blood roll down her face.
            The pain she was in hurt this man inside,
            This man watched his mother get beat,
            And could do nothing,
            But hopes his father would stop.

            Harold’s life, like his hair, has been complicated. His hair has been black, green, purple, red, pink, and then black again. But with all this color, Harold has been able to express himself  yet another way, and he can show people “another side.” Plus, he figures that when he’s older, he won’t have hair. With his new found confidence and tenacity, you can be sure that Harold Love will go far.