Schools

Triplets Honored as Rosa Parks Scholars

A set of triplets from Dearborn Heights are among the recipients of Rosa Parks Scholarships.

Khalil Eter has a problem.

He needs more arms to gather his triplet daughters in a congratulatory hug after they were honored with $2,000 awards from the Rosa Parks Scholarship Fund, the Detroit News reports.

“I don’t have enough arms to hug all three of them at the same time,” Eter told the newspaper, which established the Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation in 1980 with Detroit Public Schools and the Butzel Law Firm.

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His daughters – Leila, Maya and Sara –  graduated May 29 from Crestwood High School in Dearborn Heights. Along with 42 other Rosa Parks Scholars, they were honored at a luncheon Wednesday at the Charles H. Wright Museum in Detroit.

All three plan medical careers. Leila wants to be a dermatologist and Sara wants to be a anesthetist nurse, and both are headed to the University of Michigan. Maya is looking at a career in pediatric surgery and is headed to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

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The Detroit News said the siblings are the first set of triplets to be honored since the scholarship was established. Recipients are chosen based on academic achievement, community involvement and economic need, with special consideration given to students who epitomize the ideals of Rosa Parks, an African-American who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL, bus in 1955 and went on to become honored by Congress as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement." She moved to Detroit in 1957, shortly after the bus boycott.

Back to Khalil Eter’s problem of not having enough arms to gather in all of his children at once in a big hug:

He had better adjust. He and his wife, Ghada, are the parents of another set of triplets:  12-year-olds Mohmad, Ali and Omar.



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