Fox Island teen wins state literature contest

Michael Bouterse, 17, pens letter to historical hero

Paige Richmond

of the Gateway

There wasn’t much thought behind Michael Bouterse’s decision to enter to the state’s Letters About Literature Contest. It was almost a matter of fate.

“I had to get this off my chest, so I wrote it,” he said. “These thoughts have always been on my mind.”

Bouterse, a 17-year-old junior at Gig Harbor High School, first learned about Sophie Scholl last year while he was researching World War II for a history project. He was studying the White Rose, a non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany of which Scholl was a member.

When his project was complete, he took it upon himself to research even further by reading “At the Heart of the White Rose: the Letters and Diary Entries of Hans and Sophie Scholl.”

An avid hiker and Fox Island resident, Bouterse often headed into to the woods to read the book, which is a collection of Scholl’s writing during her lifetime.

In 1943, Scholl was convicted of high treason for distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans. She was executed by guillotine and is now celebrated as a hero for actively opposing the Third Reich.

Since reading Scholl’s writing, which included daily stories about her mother’s birthday in addition to more philosophical entries, Bouterse said he has felt inspired by her “total blatant resistance to Nazism” during a time when few Germans would take a public stand.

When he saw a poster at the GHHS library advertising the state’s Letters About Literature contest earlier this year, he felt compelled to enter. The contest asked students in fourth through 12th grades to write a personal letter to an author explaining how his or her work shaped their perspective on the world or themselves.

Much to Bouterse’s surprise, he won the contest.

“I didn’t tell anyone I entered, except for my parents,” he said.

This is the fourth year that the State Library and the Office of Secretary of State have sponsored the competition as part of Washington Reads. Almost 2,400 students from 88 Washington schools entered the contest. Bouterse was one of three champions selected.

All three winners were honored at a ceremony at the state capitol in Olympia earlier this month. Bouterse was unable to attend, but a DVD of him reading his winning letter was shown during the ceremony. His mother, sister and brother accepted the award on his behalf.

Even if the competition didn’t exist, Bouterse said he still would have written the letter to Scholl because he felt moved by both her writing and her life.

Scholl wrote about “all I things I love but no one else does,” he said.

Bouterse tends to listen to classical music — he plays the piano and the cello — and Scholl had the same tastes. They also have a common love of German poets Rainer Maria Rilke and ancient philosophers such as Plato.

It was Scholl’s real-life story, including those personal details, which inspired Bouterse to write to her. He said if he ever enters the contest again, he will write about the Biblical figure Job, because he was “a man who maintained a moral kernel in the face of suffering.”

It’s the same quality Bouterse respected most about Scholl, and what he wrote in his winning letter.

“You saw what no one else could see,” he wrote to Scholl. “You stood up for what was good because you found it in what was evil.”

Read Bouterse’s wining letter

Michael Bouterse’s winning letter about literature is available on the Web at www.secstate.wa.gov/_assets/library/lal/michael-bouterse.pdf.