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Senior Spotlight: Cameron Holder
Cameron Holder graduated Tuesday from Grimsley High wearing two crystals around her neck.
They’re about as big as a half dollar, one green, the other blue. They’re attached to two separate necklaces, and Cameron wears them everywhere at Grimsley, to cheerleading, to one of her many performances or one of her softball games.
When she plays softball, she’ll slip the two crystals into her back pocket. She’ll make a catch deep in left or center field, toss it toward the infield and think to myself, “Yeah, I know you saw that.”
That’s for her mom, Donna Leigh Holder. She played softball, too. She was a star at Elon University. She graduated in 1993, and she was talented enough to be inducted in 2005 to the Elon Hall of Fame.
Cameron misses her mom. She died when Cameron was only 1. But those two crystals remind Cameron that her mom will always be with her. When she wears or slips those two crystals into her back pocket, Cameron feels like she has the strength and confidence to do anything.
She does.
Discovering the Stage
Cameron always thought she would be a teacher or a judge or a lawyer. Then, when she was a third grader at Lindley Elementary, her aunt took her and her two cousins to see “Mulan Jr.” at the Star Theater.
Cameron was eight, and she was in awe.
“They were my age and very talented, and they made me believe I was watching ‘Mulan’ on the Disney Channel,” Cameron says today. “They moved people, they had people sitting on the edge of their seat, and I knew then I wanted to do that.”
That next summer, she went to a theater camp sponsored by the Community Theater of Greensboro, and she played “Thing One” in the musical, “Seussical Jr.” She had so much fun that the idea of being a teacher or a judge or a lawyer vanished.
Cameron wanted to act.
Since then, she has appeared in more than a dozen plays and musicals. One of her favorite roles was playing Dorothy in a musical mashup of “The Wizard of Oz” and the Black version of the musical known as “The Wiz.”
Cameron was Dorothy in the musical, “No Wiz, No Oz, Just Us Kids That’s All.” She was an eighth grader at Kiser Middle School, and in her role of Dorothy, Cameron wore a pink outfit with silver shoes she made sparkly by hot-gluing silver sequins all over them.
Dauna Jessup, her theater teacher at Kiser, helped her learn how to embrace her creativity. In doing so, Cameron embraced who she was. Cameron is biracial. Her mom is Black; her dad, white. The stage, she found, was her emotional home.
“I’ve seen a lot of different things in life, and I know it’s not a perfect American Dream, you know?” Cameron says. “But through art –– singing and dancing, acting and writing –– you can express yourself and help other people.
“That’s kind of the whole purpose. You’re helping people, and you’re helping yourself. And it’s fun.”
Finding A Different World View
Cameron has been recognized for her talent in theater. She has earned All-State honors with the North Carolina All-State Thespians, and that accomplishment has earned her two trips to the University of Nebraska for the International Thespian Festival.
To go, she has to raise money by washing cars and holding other fundraisers such as a musical showcase in a local backyard. But that opportunity introduced her to screenwriting and workshops on acting and improv and buoyed her confidence to audition for bigger roles.
She also earned the Doug Finney Leadership Grant Award to take leadership classes. Those classes gave Cameron the courage to go from a sophomore and junior class representative on Grimsley’s Student Council to the Student Body President her senior year.
“When I was cheer captain, I found it hard to be a leader around my friends, and I had a hard time putting my foot down,” Cameron says. “But in those workshops, I found that I didn’t have to put my foot down to have your peers respect you. You can say, ‘Hey, let’s stay on track, OK? And let’s have some fun.’”
Cameron has performed with the Community Theater of Greensboro as well as with the Playmasters at Grimsley High. She’s also sings with Grimsley’s show choir with its acclaimed Madrigal Singers.
As for organizations at Grimsley, she’s a member of the Young Filmmakers Club, the International Thespian Society, the Tri-M Music Society, Student Ambassadors and Women of Color in Action.
For Cameron, these organizations allow her to be her.
“You’re the main character in your life, and when you’re creative and persistent to reach your dreams, you’re a glass half-full kind of person,” she says. “You see the world differently.”
Finding Mom
Cameron never saw herself as a softball player. But the same year she played Dorothy in “No Wiz, No Oz, Just Us Kids That’s All,” she started playing softball because she saw it as a way to connect to her mom.
Donna Leigh Holder, a married mother of two, died Sept. 29, 2004. She had leukemia. She was 32.
Cameron doesn’t remember her mom. But she tries to keep her ever-present in her life.
She keeps in her room her mom’s five journals and a photo of her on a table. She’s turned the table into a makeshift altar to her mom. On the table are eight candles. Cameron will light one of them and read one of her mom’s journals to find out more about the young woman from Arlington, Va.
Then, there are the two crystals. One is a heart chakra. It’s a green crystal that promotes self-discipline and emotional and physical healing. The other is a throat chakra. It’s a blue crystal that helps express your feelings, stand up for others and speak your mind.
“She runs through my blood,” Cameron says. “Literally, I’ll say the slightest comment about something, and my dad will say, ‘That’s something your mom would say.’ He says that all the time.”
Now, consider Cameron’s birthdate: Aug. 5, 2003. Add those numbers together –– eighth month, fifth day in ’03 –– and the result is 13.
The number 13 was her mom’s favorite number, according to her husband, Ben Holder, Cameron’s dad.
“I think that’s pretty cool,” Cameron says. “There’s not much I know about my mom, but the things I do know are pretty amazing.”
Since her mom’s death, Cameron has never felt alone. She has been supported by her extended family. Her aunts. Her cousins. But especially her dad and her older sister, Graham.
“Ever since I was little, the only people I had were my dad and my sister, Graham,” she says. “They are my best friends. We’ve been through a lot together, and we’ve always ended up okay.”
Cameron’s Next Step
Next fall, Cameron will attend UNC-Pembroke. And what will be her major?
Acting.
“I see myself just making films and making enough money to do what I love,” she says, “but I know the outcome will be great because I believe that when you have a dream, you need to chase it. The world is way too big to have small dreams.”