The marathon began at 10:00 A.M. on a cold Saturday morning. Over a hundred dancers filed into the recreation center, now transformed into a playground of games, music and food. Little kids were everywhere, some in wheelchairs, some wheeling IVs around, some with only a tiny layer of fuzzy hair on their heads. Dancers whirled by in T-shirts that said, "I'm dancing for Kristen." Morale volunteers brought candy and gave foot massages as the night wore on.
At the thirty-first hour, the families assembled on stage to tell their stories. Some had children who were too sick to attend, some had lost children only days before. A
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four-year-old clutched the microphone and stood on tiptoe to say, "Thank you for raising money to save my life."
Then the parents of the twin boys took the stage, alone and holding hands by the microphone. The room fell silent. Exhausted dancers stood up straight. Into the hushed room the parents said, "Tonight we are here alone because our son is getting ready to go into surgery tomorrow morning. Earlier today a bone-marrow donor was found." Then they could no longer speak. With tears streaming down their cheeks, they mouthed the words "Thank you."
Then a group of students assembled on stage holding pieces of posterboard, each with a number painted on it. Slowly they held them up to reveal the total amount that the Dream Team had raised: $45,476.17. The crowd went wild, dancers started running around the floor and families were crying. Everyone knew it had been thirty-two hours of miracles.
Diana Breclaw
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Piano Music
There are advantages and disadvantages to coming from a large family. Make that a large family with a single parent, and they double. The disadvantages are never so apparent as when someone wants to go off to college. Parents have cashed in life insurance policies to cover the cost of one year.
My mother knew that she could not send me to school and pay for it. She worked in a retail store and made just enough to pay the bills and take care of the other children at home. If I wanted to go to college, it was up to me to find out how to get there.
I found that I qualified for some grants because of the size of our family, my mom's income and my SAT scores. There was enough to cover school and books, but not enough for room and board. I accepted a job as part of a work-study program. While not glamorous, it was one I could do. I washed dishes in the school cafeteria.
To help myself study, I made flash cards that fit perfectly on the large metal dishwasher. After I loaded the racks, I stood there and flipped cards, learning the makeup of atoms while water and steam broke them down all around me. I learned how to make y equal to z while placing dishes
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in stacks. My wrinkled fingers flipped many a card, and many times my tired brain drifted off, and a glass would crash to the floor. My grades went up and down. It was the hardest work I had ever done.
Just when I thought the bottom was going to drop out of my college career, an angel appeared. Well, one of those that are on earth, without wings.
''I heard that you need some help," he said.
"What do you mean?" I asked, trying to figure out which area of my life he meant.
"Financially, to stay in school."
"Well, I make it okay. I just have trouble working all these hours and finding time to study."
"Well, I think I have a way to help you."
He went on to explain that his grandparents needed help on the weekends. All that was required of me was cooking meals and helping them get in and out of bed in the morning and evening. The job paid four hundred dollars a month, twice the money I was making washing dishes. Now I would have time to study. I went to meet his grandparents and accepted the job.
My first discovery was his grandmother's great love of music. She spent hours playing her old, off-key piano. One day, she told me I didn't have enough fun in my life and took it upon herself to teach me the art. My campus had several practice rooms with pianos where music majors could practice. I found myself going into those rooms more and more often.
Grandma was impressed with my ability and encouraged me to continue. Weekends in their house became more than just books and cooking; they were filled with the wonderful sounds of the out-of-tune piano and two very out-of-tune singers.
When Christmas break came, Grandma got a chest cold, and I was afraid to leave her. I hadn't been home since
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Labor Day, and my family was anxious to see me. I agreed to come home, but for two weeks instead of four, so I could return to Grandma and Grandpa. I said my good-byes, arranged for their temporary care and returned home.
As I was loading my car to go back to school, the phone rang.
"Daneen, don't rush back," he said.
"Why? What's wrong?" I asked, panic rising.
"Grandma died last night, and we have decided to put Grandpa in a retirement home. I'm sorry."
I hung up the phone feeling like my world had ended. I had lost my friend, and that was far worse than knowing I would have to return to dishwashing.
I went back at the end of four weeks, asking to begin the work-study program again. The financial aid advisor looked at me as if I had lost my mind. I explained my position, then he smiled and slid me an envelope. "This is for you," he said.
It was from Grandma. She had known how sick she was. In the envelope was enough money to pay for the rest of my school year and a request that I take piano lessons in her memory.
I don't think "The Old Grey Mare" was ever played with more feeling than it was my second year in college. Now, years later, when I walk by a piano, I smile and think of Grandma. She is tearing up the ivories in heaven, I am sure.
Daneen Kaufman Wedekind
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Ten-Dollar Bills and Roses
Once a week, every week without fail, the envelopes arrived. Each college student from the small church received an anonymous envelope. Inside was a handwritten prayer and a brand-new, crisp ten-dollar bill.
When Abigail was moved to a nursing home, friends made a great discovery. They found a shoebox that contained a list of college students from her church, as well as envelopes, some leftover stamps and a few brand-new, crisp ten-dollar bills.
Word got out among the members of the congregation. Soon after, each college student sent one carefully wrapped red rose every week, with a handwritten prayer attached.
Abigail unwrapped each of the packages every week. She told the staff she was as proud of her "prayer charges," as if they were her own children, had she been blessed with them.
She never thought of herself as childless. She and dozens of former college students knew differently. After many years of giving anonymously, Abigail was rewarded with love and appreciation, one rose at a time.
Mary J. Davis
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A Not-So-Random Act of Kindness
I have seen many astounding acts of kindness during my twelve years of speaking to over two million college students on more than one thousand college campuses.
Students pitching in to collect money to send a student home to see his mother who was dying of cancer.
A blood drive to aid automobile victims near campus.
Fraternity men who go once a year to the retirement home near their chapter to dance with the older ladies the day before Valentine's Day.
Who could doubt the generosity and goodness of college students! Despite media reports to the contrary, college students care deeply about others and the world in which they live.
But one event, though small in national stature or international importance, touched my heart. At Bethany College in West Virginia, I was speaking at a dinner for student leaders, with my five-year-old son, J. J., sitting next to me. After twelve years on the road, I now take one of my childrenChrista, Samantha, J. J., or Hannahwith me on every trip. I have just gotten tired of being away from them.
We were eating dinner, when my son made a strange
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r
eptile-like sound and deposited his dinner on the table at what could have been called, up to that point, a semiformal event. It is hard in life to always think of the other person when you are dealing with your own agenda and personal embarrassment. In this case, however, I was able to ''get over myself" and realize that the little guy was in trouble. We caught the subsequent "blasts" in a bucket quickly provided by one of the students and actually finished the mealthough those with a view of my son's problem passed on dessert!
The big question I then encountered was what to do with his clothes. Being a guy, I reached the conclusion they would be thrown away, justified by the reality that we were traveling and leaving for Cincinnati that night. Suddenly I heard a voice that I now realize belonged to an angel, or perhaps a saint, standing next to me.
She said, "Give me his clothes, and I will wash them during your speech." She was a student at the dinner, she seemed sincere, and I immediately began to question her sanity. Who takes someone else's very dirty clothes and washes them, willingly? We all know it is bad enough doing your own clothes or those of someone you know and love.
"You don't have to do that. I couldn't ask that of you," I said.
"You did not ask," she stated. "And that Tigger sweat-shirt is his favorite," she said.
"How do you know that?"
"Tigger is my favorite, too," she replied, "and he and I talked about it during dinner."
I realized then that I had been wrapped up in myself and missed their entire conversation. I knew, too, that I was dealing with an extraordinary young woman who wanted to reach out to someone in need, even though she had never met us before. As she left with the clothes in a
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trash bag, I turned to her mentor and said, "She is really something. What year is she?" He said, "A freshman, and what you have seen is a regular occurrence with her."
When something silly happens on a campus now, or even a bad thing takes place, I think of that young woman, armed with J. J.'s clothes in a bag, heading for her residence hall. She gives me hope because I know there are others like her. Students who are good and kindpersons who will be in charge of the world my children will grow up in. That night I was theoretically the teacher . . . but in reality, she was my teacher, and I was her humble student.
That is the beauty of being an educator. If you are open to the possibilities, there is a good chance that we will exchange roles at times and grow together. Dean Robert Schaffer of Indiana University once said, "I have to believe that the student's life will be better because we have met rather than if we had not, because I know how much richer my life has become because of my students."
One fall night in Bethany, West Virginia, my life became richer, my purpose empowered, my spirit lifted because of a not-so-random act of kindness by a wonderful college freshman.
Will Keim
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Christy's Last Day
Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.
Saint Francis DeSalas
I did it. Finally. After four years of struggling, studying, and working nights in the library to help pay my tuition, there were only thirty seconds of the last minute of the last exam of the last class of my college career. All I had to do now was traverse the campus to my car and drive home to start my new lifeas a college graduate. It was all downhill from here.
Well, maybe not. Halfway across campus, my heel broke. I continued limping and suddenly what was otherwise a sunny day began to cloud over. Was that a drop of rain I just felt on my cheek? What next?
By the time I reached my car, I was drenched. So much for my new life being filled with sunshine. I was forty-five minutes late for margaritas. And there was a lot of traffic. I guess everyone else was in a hurry to get home and start their new lives too.
I negotiated the maze of parking lots and drove to the
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edge of campus. One more traffic light to go and fiesta. The light turned green but the car in front of me didn't move. The driver began to honk. Then he swerved around whatever was blocking his path and sped off. I began to do the same when I realized that the obstruction was a man in a wheelchair. In fact, I recognized him as one of my fellow classmates whom I had seen many times over the past four years, but never spoken to.
But I was in a hurry. I had important celebrating to do. I began to drive off. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the man struggling to get his chair out of the muddy intersection.
Surely someone else will help him, I thought.
But what if everyone else thought that, too?
I stopped.
His name was Jordan. It was difficult to understand this at first. His cerebral palsy affected his speech. We tried to get his wheelchair into my college student's econo-box but to no avail. If I was going to help him, it meant pushing him to wherever he was going, in the rain, in the mud. I like to think of myself as a nice person, but surely there were limits. After all, I did stop when no one else did. I did try to get his chair in my car. At least I got him out of the intersection.
As I was sorting through this moral dilemma, I looked down at Jordan. He was shivering in the rain. But he was smiling. For some reason, he didn't seem to mind. He clearly didn't expect me to do more than I had already done. He began to wheel off down the muddy sidewalk. I couldn't leave him now.
I locked my car and quickly caught up to him. I began to push. It was uphill for what seemed like a mile. Every hundred yards or so, with great effort, Jordan would crane his neck around so that he could look up at me in appreciation. How could I have even thought of leaving him? I thought.
At the end of our long trek to Jordan's apartment,
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which was the closest disabled person's accessible building to campus, both of us were soaked to the bone and drenched in sweat. I couldn't believe that Jordan had managed to do this alone, every day for four years. To think I threw a minor tantrum every time I couldn't find a parking space close enough to my classes! Jordan insisted that I come in and dry off. He said there was someone he wanted me to meet.
I was a little afraid to go inside. I don't know what I expected. I hadn't ever been to a disabled person's home before. I guess I was afraid of the unknown. When I got inside, I was a little ashamed of my fears. Not only was I surprised, I was impressed. Jordan's apartment didn't look like any ordinary college student's slovenly habitat. Instead, it was a modicum of efficiency and good taste. Each item was carefully placed and within Jordan's reach. And so many books!
"Have you read all these?" I asked him.
"One a week for the last four years," he replied.
That, in addition to his studies! He reached for my hand and motioned for me to follow him to the back bedroom. He knocked gently and whispered something through the door. I followed him inside. He introduced me to his bedridden mother whom I later found out had suffered a stroke some years earlier. Chair-bound Jordan, full-time college student and avid reader was also her primary caretaker.
Jordan left us there and went to make some tea. I wasn't sure if his mother even knew that I was in the room or if she understood what Jordan had just told her about the chair and the rain. But suddenly she raised up her head and began to speak.
"In four years," she said, "not one person has ever helped my son. It's not that he needs help, but it gets lonely out there sometimes."
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