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Senior Devin Maier is Westminster Christian School’s Silver Knight nominee in the area of Music and Dance. He also received the Orchestra Honors Award. He plays viola in the orchestra and has played the instrument since fourth grade.
Maier started helping with Orchestra Buddies in his sophomore year and has continued to help elementary school students learn how to improve their music skills. He practices with students on Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour after school.
“It’s amazing,” he says. “I get to help them learn new things about the viola.”
His freshman year, he started a chapter of Connect4Cancer at Westminster. Club members go to the Ronald McDonald House to help kids with cancer and other illnesses.
“We have raised money for them,” he says. “We try to bring arts and crafts. We go Halloween, Easter, Christmas. We do arts and crafts.”
Then COVID came along and they had to figure out a new system to help the kids.
“During COVID, we would send out an email to all the members and we would gather in a room and put together little goodie bags,” he says. “Even though we couldn’t be there, we could still give them a little happiness.”
The goodie bags contained stuffed animals, toys, coloring books and other arts and craft items.
Maier started the club so he could help others.
“I got together a group of people I knew would show up and do the work,” he says. “It started smaller and as time went on, it grew. It was an amazing experience for me.”
He wanted something he could bring to Westminster on his own. He was already taking over Heartstrings, an organization run by his sister to go to retirement homes and play for the seniors living there.
“We would organize rehearsals and scheduled the times we would play for the senior citizens there,” he says.
When COVID restrictions put an end to in-person performances, they pivoted to personalized videos where the orchestra would play happy birthday.
“We would personalize each video,” he says. “‘Hello, Ruby, we want to wish you a happy birthday’.”
The personalized videos would go to the seniors who live at East Ridge Retirement Home or The Palace.
“The Palace sent us a video back of one of the recipients, watching it. She really enjoyed it,” he says. “It was good to see. It took quite a bit of work, so getting to see them smile and be happy for something that we did, it made it all worthwhile.”
Maier was happy that they were able to do an in-person concert for East Ridge residents in December.
When Maier graduates, his younger sister Dylan will take over both Heartstrings and Connect4Cancer.
Maier is a board member of the English Honor Society and Tri-M (music honor society), service coordinator of the Science National Honor Society, a member of the National Honor Society, Rho Kappa, and vice president of Mu Alpha Theta, the math honor society.
Maier has been accepted into the University of Florida, Clemson, the Florida State Honors program and the University of Central Florida. He is still waiting to hear from Cornell, Duke and USC.
He’s interested in majoring in business/finance and possibly working in banking.
To gain more insight into business, he joined FBLA.
“I’m on the board,” he says. “We set up competitions. We compete in various aspects of business including stocks, running a virtual business, running a virtual hospital and finance.”
Maier is also an athlete. He’s played soccer since he was little. He’s on Westminster’s soccer team. The team won districts this year.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
