St. Vincent de Paul High School's top graduate made time for volunteering

St. Vincent de Paul High School's valedictorian Jonathan Meinhardt knew how to succeed in school. He had the right attitude, absorbed information easily and excelled at balancing school with the crazy spin of a teenager's life. The fact that he knew how to manage his time when it came to schoolwork and studying only helped.

Meinhardt found that while still making the grades, he had plenty of time to get as involved as possible. He ran cross country and track, played basketball and golf, was a member of Pep Club and Spanish Club and played bass drum in marching band.

He also was a volunteer in the St. Vincent de Paul Society Club during his four years of high school.

"We'd go up to the soup kitchen in St. Louis and help out," he said. "I think it's good to volunteer. I think you should always try and give back what you have. It's kind of hard to think about yourself and how lucky you are with what you have and not try and help other people."

For Meinhardt's first three years with the group, they worked with the elderly in nursing homes. During his last year, they worked with the homeless.

"It's interesting because with the elderly people, they want attention," he said. "You know, they want somebody to kind of talk to them because they don't get that a lot. And then for the homeless people, they want to survive. They also like the social interaction, too, but they're more for getting food to take back wherever they were, because they didn't know where their next meal was going to come from. It was kind of eye opening, because it kind of shows you what it's like living on the streets."

Volunteering and running are pastimes Meinhardt plans to extend to college this fall. He will attend Saint Louis University to pursue either a degree in aerospace engineering or take the pre-med route and go on to medical school to become a doctor in the cardiovascular field.

If Meinhardt goes into the medical field, he wants to come back to the area to practice. If he chooses engineering, he wants to work for Boeing or Lockheed Martin, building spaceships or rockets.

"I always liked planes when I was little, you know, be able to fly, and I've always liked designing stuff," he said.

In seventh grade, Meinhardt's group for a science fair project built a 15-foot hang glider out of PVC pipe.

"We got it to go off a little bit," he said. "It was good. It got a little scary, though. I got about five feet, six feet in the air and kind of freaked out."

Meinhardt thinks he has what it takes to be happy and successful in whichever field he decides on.

"You want to succeed, and you want something that's going to push you far in life," he said. "When you decide that you want something cool or that's kind of far out there, you know you have to get there, so you push yourself."

botto@semissourian.com