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Many have touched our lives

I was chatting with a co-worker about Boy Scouts, and he mentioned that he, too, was a Boy Scout, just like the Professor. His parents were involved in leadership positions with a pack and two troops, and they spent many weekends hiking, camping or maintaining local Scout facilities.

He told me that he recently found a collection of old photographs from his Scouting days and shared them on social media — and that many of his fellow Scouts had found and appreciated them, although several decades had passed.

It made me start thinking about the impact we have on one another, and how interconnected our communities are, although I doubt we really think about it in the moment. I thought about how people have passed in and out of the children’s lives — and my life — and have made our lives better. I wondered if they knew how much we appreciated them and whether they realized that they had improved our lives, helped us, even sheltered us while they were doing it. Or if they thought they were only just going about their day, doing their job or stepping up to fill a position that needed to be filled.

I think about the Professor’s baseball coach who drafted him despite knowing about his difficulties with — and his love for — the game. At the time, we were struggling with what being on the autism spectrum meant for him. We were afraid it would hold him back. But this coach accepted — chose — him.

“As long as he tries hard and works hard,” he said.

We will never forget that, and the Professor’s love of baseball is as rooted in that coach’s acceptance as it is in afternoons at PNC with his father.

And there is his Scout leader, who once told me that seeing children like the Professor, who doubted he could accomplish something, successfully completing it was its own reward.

Sass has her own circle of important adults, including her Scout leader, with whom she still laughs over “duck boots” and “treeeees!” and who, every once in a while, shakes her head and marvels that once Sass was shy and quiet. (So do I.)

And her band instructor, who juggles the middle and high school band and choral programs while making room for a musical every spring and welcoming every student, despite ability or talent, and finding a place for him or her. She wants to help non-neurotypical children as a career, and it’s people like him to whom she looks for inspiration.

And for both of them, there is the teacher whom we call Legend. They’ve learned so much and gone on so many adventures with her. She is someone whom Sass thinks is perfect — move over, Mary Poppins, you’re only “practically perfect” — and the Professor trusts.

Most of these people would just say that they were doing what needs to be done, but they’ve become part of the children’s lives and influence who they’ve become.

Perhaps, one day decades into the future, they’ll look back at those who helped them along, and say, “remember when?”

(Wallace-Minger, a resident of Weirton, is community editor of The Weirton Daily Times.)

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