ROSSMOOR : One More Honor for Wonder Student

The list of Kevin Bundy’s achievements reads like the ideal college application: National Merit Finalist, winner of the Princeton Book Award, national writing award from a teachers’ association, young scholar sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Furthermore, the 17-year-old Los Alamitos High School senior has completed the first semester of college while still in high school, speaks French, is an amateur astronomer, has been on his school’s baseball team--and plays piano and guitar.

This month Kevin, who looks more like a surfer than a scholar, added another accomplishment to his list. He was nominated for the Principal’s Leadership Award, sponsored by a national association of high school principals.

His father, Allen Bundy, said he can’t explain his son’s talents in so many fields. As for the latest honor, he joked, “I think they pulled his name out of a hat.”

That his son writes well is no mystery, given that both of Kevin’s parents were English teachers at one time.

But the aptitude in physics and math, his father said, is a mystery.

“He left me behind in the third grade,” his father said.

The younger Bundy is modest about his accomplishments, acquaintances said.

“I had known him for 10 years before I realized he was an accomplished pianist,” said family friend Jack Bishop.

Kevin Bundy said that when he talks about his ambition--to study astrophysics at UC Berkeley--it often distances people.

“It’s like a brick wall goes up. It’s sad,” he said, that people seem to shut themselves off from the sciences.

The problem might be solved, he said, if science books were a bit more reader-friendly. To help bridge the gap, he said, he might someday write texts that are less formidable.

He already has the first chapter: a short story about the Orion Nebula.