Wilton Garden Club Honors Wilton High’s Natasha Ring with Scholarship

It just happens sometimes. Life is heading strongly in one direction with a passion in one area with little room for anything else. Then an unexpected event takes place that changes everything.

Such was the case with Wilton High School Senior Natasha Ring. She had concentrated most of her time and efforts on being a top-notch athlete, but in 2018 two months before her 14th birthday, an ice hockey accident caused damage to her spinal cord and left her paralyzed from the waist down. Fortunately, the paralysis lasted only 9 hours, however, the hard work required to get back her mobility lasted a lot longer and changed her outlook and goals in life. Nature called.

The love for the outdoors and environment that she had felt as a very young girl when her beloved late Aunt Hannah had taken her to Boston Harbor and on other nature outings was reawakened. Athletics was still important, but so was her quest to learn all she could about the environment. So much so, that she will be entering her Freshman year this August at Bryn Mawr College with plans to study environmental science and education. And she will also use her athletic abilities by playing Division 3 field hockey, a sport she has enjoyed coaching in town as well.

Each year the Wilton Garden Club awards the Marybeth Wheeler Scholarship to a graduate who has shown a strong interest in nature and the environment and Natasha certainly qualified in that area. Ms. Wheeler, a Club member for 50 years and a dedicated conservationist is responsible for the Wilton Garden Club’s Marybeth Wheeler Herbarium, housed now at the Yale University Herbarium at Peabody Museum of Natural History. It is comprised of over 1,000 preserved plant species collected in Wilton and the surrounding environs.

Natasha has immersed herself in learning about nature. For 2 years she has been a Counselor in Training at the Woodcock Nature Center Summer Camp and this summer will be a full-fledged camp counselor there. She worked there with Sam Nunes and Tommy McCarthy during the summers learning all she could about nature and Woodcock’s 5 vernal pools and all the amphibians and other creatures who live in them. The campers are in for a real treat this summer as she shares with them all she has learned in the last few years.

It was a pleasure for me to get to know Natasha in our short meeting. I learned about her years of taking Latin and how she stayed with that course for all 4 years at Wilton High because of the masterful teacher she had. Mr. Max Gabrielson made that language come alive for his students. Then there’s the fun she had taking part in the “Read To Me Club” which gave her the opportunity to read to students at Miller Driscoll School. And last, but not least, I loved hearing about her internship teaching at the Zions Hill School, especially the lessons she had the chance to observe being taught to the 2-5 year old students on microscopes.

The Wilton Garden Club is honored to award Natasha with the Marybeth Wheeler Scholarship. Our members wish her and all of the departing seniors congratulations on all their accomplishments in the last 4 years while at Wilton High School and we feel confident that they will continue to make their marks while in college.