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Show . Ill MM HOT I .11. Panguitch High School seniors Bonnie Nelson and Tyler Owens returned recently from the National Young Leaders Conference in Washington D.C. The two were among 350 outstanding scholars attending the conference from throughout the United States. Two Panguitch Seniors To Young Leaders Conference PANGUITCH Two Panguitch Pan-guitch High School seniors, Bonnie Bon-nie Nelson and Tyler Owens were selected to attend the National Young Leaders Conference (NYLC) Mar. 4 through Mar. 9 in Washington, D. C, returning just last week. The conference is a unique leadership development program for high school students who have demonstrated leadership leader-ship potential and scholastic merit. As seniors, Nelson and Owens were among 350 outstanding outstand-ing scholars attending the conference confer-ence from across the United States. The theme of this year's conference con-ference was "The Leaders of Tomorrow To-morrow Meeting the Leaders of Today." Throughout the six-day conference, the students interacted inter-acted with keys leaders and newsmakers from all three branches of government, the media me-dia and diplomatic corps. "It was," stated Tyler Owens, "a time for us small town men and women to show those easterners a thing or two about how good common sense works. Nelson and Owens were able to do that by participation in Supreme Su-preme Court proceedings, where each was separated into groups of 22 persons. Four from each group got to be lawyers (including Owens) and got to argue the merits mer-its of questions before the highest court in the land. Both students also got to visit embassies and participate in a mock Congress session, where Owens got to write a new amendment for his group. Highlights of the program included in-cluded hearing welcoming remarks re-marks on the Floor of the United States House of Representatives and a panel discussion with prominent journalists at the National Na-tional Press Club. This year's crop of would-be leaders were treated to a review of the war on street violence by the head of Alcohol, Al-cohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) division. Nelson and Owens especially enjoyed the display of banned assault weapons weap-ons and a demonstration by firearms fire-arms dog "Charlie." This canine was capable of finding a brand-new, brand-new, never been fired Colt 45 weapon amongst the students upon command of this trainer. Staying at the National 4-H Center, the youths were also able to tour all the memorials in and around Washington, see the Department De-partment of State, the Capitol Building, Arlington Cemetery, the Smithsonian and the National Archives. Ar-chives. For Nelson this was her first actual airplane flight, as well as her first trip to the nation's capitol. Owens thought the trip to be "one of the most outstanding of his high school years," but was frustrated that photos of his favorite favor-ite memorial, Iwo Jima, did not turn out. The National Young Leaders Conference if sponsored by the Congressional Youth Leadership Council, a nonprofit, on partisan educational organization, founded in 1985. Each year, 7,000 outstanding out-standing youths nationwide have the opportunity to participate in the 20 sessions of the conference. Bonnie is a daughter of Gordon and Miriam Nelson of Hatch and Tyler is a son of Gary and Karla Owens of Panguitch. |