Mount Blue class president receives memorial scholarship
Six years after Jaime Beth Shible died, Angela Nile, who considers Shible her role model, was awarded a scholarship in her name.
By Samantha C. DePoy
Staff Writer

FARMINGTON – As a seventh-grader, Angela Nile wrote an essay about her role model Jamie Beth Shible.

Shible was everything Nile, of Wilton, aspired to be. She had lived life to the fullest, had been a leader on the Mount Blue High School cheerleading team and had always made sure to seize the day.

Nile had known Shible well as the older girl was friends with Nile’s big sister, Amy Littlefield.

A year before Nile wrote that essay, Shible had died in May, just two days after the prom, following a long battle with Lupus.

Five years later, the senior class president Nile found herself writing another essay about Shible, her inspiration, and last Friday, under the shade of a tree planted in Shible’s memory on the grounds of MBHS, Nile was honored as a recipient of the $500 Jamie Beth Shible Memorial Scholarship Award.

Each year, the scholarship honors a MBHS senior cheerleader who is attending post-secondary education.

The money will go to help Nile pay for college, which she starts next fall at the University of Maine at Orono where she hopes to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering.

The money, Niles says, doesn’t matter. Being selected as someone who epitomizes Shible means so much more.

“I am honored. I hope to keep her tradition alive,” Nile said, her brown hair lifted by the breeze. “Jamie is always with me, wherever I go. I don’t think she’ll ever be forgotten. She would love the fact that people could have this opportunity to go to college and follow their dreams in her memory. She was just such an all-around nice person.”

Besides being an All-American cheerleader, Nile is also a peer helper, a member of the Future Business Leaders of America club at the high school, a worker at Steve’s Market in Wilton and ranks 38 out of her class of 233 that will graduate on June 8.

This summer, for the first time, she will be a coach at the Jamie Beth Shible Cheerleading Camp, put on by the Farmington Recreation Department.

“There are many things that have inspired me in my lifetime,” Nile wrote in her essay for the scholarship application. “But when I think of people who have inspired me the most, there is only one name that comes to mind, Jamie Shible. When I think of Jamie, I see a strong-hearted lady that lived life to the fullest. From her I realized that life is full of things you can do, so don’t let them pass you by.

“There wasn’t a single person that wanted her out of their lives due to the fact that no matter where she was, she always brought a smile to their face,” Nile went on to write. “This girl lived her life day-by-day, not knowing what the future would bring for her. I have come to the conclusion that no matter what, do all that you can in the time that you have, because no one knows what the future may hold.”

Steve Shible, who stood with his wife, Julie, at the ceremony, said it is still hard to imagine that Jamie is gone. He spoke about how Nile’s seventh-grade essay, which was sent to him by her teacher, touched his heart.

It’s funny, he said, how years later, she is receiving Jamie’s scholarship. “She is as upstanding a recipient as we’ve ever had,” he said.

A video remembering the life of Jamie Beth Shible will be played on Mount Blue Community Access Television (Channel 11 in Farmington and Wilton) twice a day from Friday, May 23, through Tuesday, May 27.

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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