The Shannon brothers (l-r) Christopher, Charlie, William and Nicholas hoist the youngest sibling, Finn, after his graduation from the Gulf Stream School. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
Related: Tots & Teens: Gulf Stream School Graduation — June 6
By Ron Hayes
William Shannon left first in 2010.
Christopher followed in 2013.
Then Nicholas in 2015, Charlie in 2016.
On June 6, Finn became the last of the five Shannon brothers to graduate from the Gulf Stream School.
They left an institution that has been a family to their family for 18 years, and took with them memories both happy and sad, and educations they treasure.
“Honestly, it’s been surreal every time I think about leaving Gulf Stream because it’s been such an important part of my life since I was 3 years old,” Finn Shannon, 14, reflected a few days after the graduation ceremony. “The school has done so much for me, my brothers, my mom. There’s always a connection.”
Now, before you ask, Finn was not named for Huckleberry. As the youngest Shannon, and the child born in Florida after the family moved to Gulf Stream from Montreal in 2007, Finn was given a name that reflected their new home.
“We wanted something to represent the ocean,” their mother, Anna Shannon, explains. “We thought of either Reef or Fin. So, we chose Fin and added an n.”
Ask him what kind of an education he received, and Finn doesn’t hesitate.
“Phenomenal, and it’s going to help me my entire life,” he says. “They focused on making sure we were ready for life. They taught us the difference between right and wrong, and how to be the best human being we could be, how to impact the world for the better.
“And the English teachers were always on the watch for a grammar mistake.”
In the fall, he will start ninth grade at St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton, which William, his oldest brother, also attended. The other three, Christopher, Nicholas and Charlie, went on to St. John Paul II Academy.
The family home is now in Delray Dunes.
Choosing St. Andrew’s for his high school years seems appropriate.
“Finn and Will have a lot in common,” their mother says. “The three in the middle all played lacrosse at St. John Paul. They’re more athletic. But Finn and William are more academic.”
The oldest, Will, and the youngest, Finn, would rather read than play sports.
“Will introduced me to Harry Potter,” Finn says, “and the Gulf Stream School really strengthened my love of reading.”
He was assigned The Giver and Lord of the Flies, both sophisticated dystopian novels. But his favorite subject was history.
“I took Latin for three years and it made me learn about Roman culture and mythology,” he says. “I learned how to speak some Latin, and our teacher would bring us out onto the field, and we’d have a Roman battle with pool noodles. It was very fun. Not much speaking, but a lot of screaming and laughing.”
The Shannon family was featured in The Coastal Star in May 2011: Anna Shannon surrounded by her loving sons and husband, Bill, then at their Gulf Stream home. From left, Charlie, 8, Chris, 12, Anna, Finn, 6 weeks, Will, 14, Nick, 10, and Bill. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
‘Mr. Shannon’s disease’
The school’s athletic field was not always a place for laughter.
Finn Shannon was only 3 months old in 2011 when his father, Bill, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
ALS is a progressive disease in which the motor neurons from the brain to the spinal cord slowly weaken, leading to paralysis and death. But to the boys’ fellow students, ALS was “Mr. Shannon’s disease.”
Bill Shannon was already using a wheelchair on Sept. 12, 2014, when the school proved it is more than a place to study Latin.
At 2 p.m. that afternoon, all but a dozen of the older students had their parents’ permission to stand in line and dump buckets of ice water over their heads in the popular “ice bucket challenge.” Participants were asked to donate $5. The event raised at least $700 for ALS research.
Two months later, Bill Shannon’s funeral service was held in the school chapel.
“Not to be too saccharine about it,” Anna Shannon says now, “but when Bill was sick and died, those teachers really rallied around the kids, and there was never a day, even in the worst of times, when they didn’t want to go to school. After Bill passed away, two teachers had them come in for tutoring, to keep them busy.”
Where are they now?
If Finn’s time at the school has prepared him for adulthood as well as it trained the older boys, his future is secure.
William, 29, is the head of strategic itineraries for a company in Barcelona, Spain.
Christopher, 26, is an analyst at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Nicholas, 24, has just earned his MBA at Florida Southern.
And Charlie, 22, a Lynn University grad, is a superintendent for a local builder.
Institutions love to promote themselves as families. Employees are “family.” Family restaurants. Family entertainment. Family Dollar. But at the Gulf Stream School, the numbers don’t lie.
Of the 21 students in Finn's graduating class this year, 19 have a sibling who either graduated before them or is still attending the school.
“I just want people to know how much the teachers have done for me and my family,” Finn Shannon says, “and how important the Gulf Stream School was in all our lives.
“I know I can’t go back as a student, but I can always go and visit, just to see what’s going on. And when I have kids of my own, I want them to go there, too. I’m planning for the future.”
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