Brought To You By Rapides Parish School Board; Written By Mary Helen Downey
When recent Alexandria Senior High graduate, Clark Wright, talks about his future, he doesn’t lead with the jets or the engineering or even the rare distinction he’s earned. He leads with people.
“I want to do something that will benefit others,” he says, “and I think it’s great to be around people who are actively trying to better themselves.”
That instinct—to serve, and to surround himself with others reaching higher—has shaped nearly every decision Clark has made. This fall, it carries him to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where he’ll major in aeronautical engineering and pursue his goal of becoming a pilot.
For Clark, the path toward service didn’t begin with his own application. It began in family stories, in the example set long before he was old enough to understand it. Two of his uncles graduated from West Point and served as colonels. He grew up close to that example, watching what service asked of the people who chose it.
That legacy extends beyond the military. Clark is an Eagle Scout, a rank he shares with his dad, his grandfather, and several cousins—a quiet through-line of discipline, leadership, and follow-through passed down across generations. When asked where his work ethic and his ability to absorb setbacks come from, he doesn’t hesitate.
“My family,” he says, simply.
So when mentors and relatives encouraged him to keep his options open, Clark applied not to one service academy but to all three: West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy. Then came the part almost no applicant expects: he was accepted to every one.
Admission to even a single academy demands a gauntlet most students never face. Clark passed a rigorous physical fitness test, proved himself with strong academics and a competitive ACT score, and earned nominations from a U.S. Congressman and Senators. Throughout high school, he steadily sharpened his focus, setting his sights on growing and serving others.
The people who shaped him weren’t only relatives. Clark ran cross country at Alexandria Senior High alongside two co-captains who are now cadets at West Point and the Naval Academy. Training beside them, he learned what it meant to push toward a shared goal.
“Being in their company, all working toward goals of winning meets and pushing ourselves, was helpful to me,” he says.
That idea—that the right people make you better—is the heart of the advice he offers younger students. Seize leadership opportunities, he tells them. And above all: “Find people who push you to be better.”
His own road ahead is demanding by design. Four years at the Academy. A commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. Five years of active-duty service. For some, that timeline might read as a sacrifice. For Clark, it reads as the point.
He isn’t chasing a title or a cockpit for their own sake. He’s carrying forward something his family handed him — a belief that a life well spent is one spent in service to others—and adding his own chapter to it.
