May 31, 2009 — When St. John resident Zaid Sewer, 18, goes off to the Art Institute of Atlanta in the fall, it will be with the help of a $2,000 Rotary Club of St. John scholarship.
While Malik Stevens received the club's main four-year scholarship (see "@School: Malik Stevens."), club members for the first time since the program's start awarded a one-time scholarship to Sewer.
"Zaid was so good we decided to give him a special scholarship," says Rotary Club President B.J. Harris.
Sewer, a Eudora Kean High School graduating senior, says he's delighted to receive the money.
"It's going to help a lot in these economic times," he says. "College is so expensive."
Sewer wants to be a music-recording producer when he's finished with his education, a job that will enable him to pull together all his musical inclinations in one spot.
While he now creates music digitally on the computer, he also plays piano, and when he was younger played steel pan for a dozen years with the Love City Pan Dragons. And he plays the double tenor pan professionally with his two cousins, Albion and Ricardo Sewer, as the band Sewer Side.
"Usually we play for weddings," he says.
His artistic abilities don't stop with music: He also writes poetry and does a little bit of drawing.
While he has traveled with his family during summer school breaks, this summer he'll head to the mainland to visit the Art Institute of Atlanta. He says he's excited to go off island to attend school.
"It will be a new experience and I'll be closer to my dream," he says.
It will also mean he won't have to commute any longer to St. Thomas to attend school. While he attended Julius E. Sprauve and Guy Benjamin Schools on St. John, once he hit middle school he hopped the early ferry so he could go to Bertha C. Boschulte School.
At Eudora Kean, he's a member of the National Honor Society and maintains an A average.
Sewer lives with his parents, Oswin Sewer and Laurel Hewitt-Sewer, and his brother, Oswin Sewer Jr.
His parents are very proud.
"Zaid is very focused," his mother says.
According to Hewitt-Sewer, her son knows exactly what he wants to do with his life. She says he sets goals and works very hard. And, she says, he's very committed to his music.
"He's off to a good start," she says.
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