Our Fresh Air child arrived on a hot summer afternoon. As the host families waited with signs, balloons, nervous chatter and laughter dotted the suburban mall parking lot. Families called one by one and greeted the children as they exited the bus. Everyone wished everyone good luck and greetings “have a good time” abounded. The sense of community was evident and could warm a heart. It is this warmth that I hope to remember even in the dead of winters to come.
We’ve been together one and a half days. It is delightful to get to know this girl. Watching my daughter get to know her, this young girl feeling her way around our family, is a little piece of heaven. How brave these young girls are! Our fresh air girl and my daughter! They don’t know it yet but this experience for whatever the outcome is etched in their lives for ever.
My grandfather who was born in 1900 and emigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1904 was a Fresh Air child. Yes, I remember the story about him trying to learn to swim and being in a canoe but little else do I remember of the story. Except that my grandfather always sought to improve himself. He had a first edition of Dale Carnegie’s book Public Speaking and Influencing Men In Business on self-improvement. He was an articulate man who always did the best for his family. He was a community man being a Big Brother when he was in his late teens and early 20′s and as an adult a member of the Knights of Columbus-Forth Degree Knight. Was it this experience as a Fresh Air Child that made him so community minded?
As an early teen, I was a head start volunteer for three summers. It was my grandfather who drove me to this program each summer. In his quiet way, I knew he was proud and supportive of what I did. Was it his story, that prompted me to do this? Was it his stories that always kept me on a path to self-improvement, community service, being more?
My grandfather was a produce store manager when he was seriously shot during a hold up and robbery. I was the age of my daughter and fresh air child when this happened. It was 1965.
Miraculously my grandfather survived. That summer as he convalesced, I sat with him every summer evening. He was never bitter or revengeful. He forgave the young man who shot him who by the way was never found. It may have been part of something larger as a number of store managers were shot during the months to follow. One in the driveway of his home. The last contact my mother had with the detective was that my grandfather’s shooting may have been mistaken identity as the manager killed lived in the same community as my grandfather.
The priest in the parish where my grandfather donated goods from his store on a regular basis said “the devil was at work” on the evening my grandfather was shot. As a 10-year-old, comprehending the devil does indeed exist was impressionable. My grandfather’s healing and the way he lived his remaining life was also impressionable. It has shaped my being also.
Today as I host this child, I think of him, his life, my being and how this will trickle down into generations and the universe.
As I said, so far I’ve experienced a little piece (peace) of heaven. Thanks Gramps. Amen
