Eljak was adventurous and active. He loved playing sports. Running was his favorite.
He played soccer and basketball too, but as his mom said, “running had his heart.” Eljak was on the cross-country team, the track team and was in the junior milers program. Coach Hagan said he had these pink trail spikes you could see flying through the woods. “He just kept getting better and better as he figured things out,” Hagan said. In the Vermont High School Cross Country Championship, Eljak Menjwak placed fourth for BHS, running at a sub 7 minute mile pace.
Some of this energy was fueled by his reliable Red Bull. Every day, he would come into Ms. King’s study hall with a Red Bull or iced vanilla latte and a sugary treat. When Ms. King joked with him about how much sugar and caffeine he was consuming Eljak would say, “Well, I don’t drink that much of it. My friend, my other friend, drinks more than me. He always has the big one, and I’m only drinking a small one.” But to his friends he would say, “Watch, the drinks are going to make me strong.”
Eljak Menjwak, who would be graduating in a few weeks, passed away last June. Eljak and his family moved to America from Egypt in 2022. In Egypt, Eljak loved to sing. He sang in the church choir. He continued to love music when he moved to Vermont. He played the piano and was learning how to play the guitar. But Eljak had a versatile taste in music; his friends know him as loving Tupac and Pop Smoke.
Beneath the running and the caffeine, Eljak was calm. He was solid and dependable. Hard-working. Kind, in a quiet way. Amr Ibrahim ‘29 said he wasn’t confident in his English when he met Eljak at Oakledge Beach a few years ago. Eljak must have picked up on it because after saying “Hi” in English, Eljak said it in Arabic too. They were friends from then on.
“He always made sure you were seen, just by saying hi,” Ms. King said. “He just did the right thing.”
Eljak was dependable. As his parents said, “He’s always thinking of [the] future. What are his roles and what’s going to be his role in the future? He’s very responsible. Among all his siblings, Eljak was the one who woke up in the early morning to get to school on time. It was consistent with him.”
His friends said the same thing.
“He was always locked in. And always said, ‘be good to your work. Don’t skip school’,” Rahmatullah Mohammadi ‘27 said. “[And] he never skipped school. Even if he was on the bus or something, he was on time, working hard.”
Eljak wanted his friends to behave the same way. He always told his friends to be on time and to show up too.
One of his biggest goals before he passed away was to buy a sports car. All of his friends knew how much he wanted that car.
“He was always working hard to buy the car since he was a junior. He was working hard every day to buy this car and play soccer with his friends.”
His friends said he was very close to saving up enough money.
Last year, Eljak’s Year End Studies class was aviation. Within a few days Eljak declared that he wanted to be a pilot.
One day, Eljak’s mother Martha heard a plane flying over her house. A few hours later, Eljak came running home.“Mom! Mom! Did you hear the plane today? That was me,” Eljak said, “up there, flying.”
