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LAYTON — A Layton High School student will graduate at the end of May without having missed a single day of school since he started Kindergarten.
Marshall McAllister has walked through the front doors of his school from kindergarten all the way through his senior year with a 100 percent attendance record. His record has calculated to a 2,340 perfect attendance streak.
McAllister's attendance record is in comparison to baseball legend "all-time Iron Man," Cal Ripken Jr. whose consecutive-games streak spanned 17 years and more than 2,600 games.
"In high school and junior high, some of the kids wouldn't believe me," McAllister said. "They wouldn't believe me at all. And other kids, they just think, 'That's amazing.' "
Day in and day out, McAllister's constant devotion pushed him to do anything and everything necessary to ensure his victory, often to his mother's dismay.
"Sometimes he would hide that he was sick until he got home from school on Friday, and so that's when we realized how serious he was, that he wasn't letting on that he probably shouldn't have been at school," said McAllister's mother, Andrea.
McAllister said he received his inspiration to never miss a day of school from watching a Channel 5 news story in 1999 when he was 4 years old.
"I saw this story that a young man had achieved his goal of never missing a day of school, and I told my mom that I wanted to do that, too," he said.
After watching the story and hearing McAllister's goal, even his parents didn't think that it was very likely to happen.
"I thought he was crazy, because at that age you don't really realize how long 12 or 13 years of schooling is," Andrea said.
However, since his preschool declaration, McAllister set the goal and achieved perfect attendance.
