Read Steves latest article, and then please join us this Friday and Saturday for a bone marrow swab event at Catholic High. One simple act can save a life. Its so easy and takes no time at all. Contact me for more information, or if you would like to volunteer at the event. Lets do this, yall! IN PRAISE OF GIVING By Steve Straessle, special to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. The river looked like a forest had been deposited within it. Massive, hulking trees tumbled down the shoreline as the brown water churned. Even though I was moving alongside the river at an easy pace, I found it hard to catch my breath. The river moved fast and violently in mocking contrast to my slow, steady footfalls. Id never run in that East Coast city before, but I was glad for the time. It gave me time to think while my wife, Ann, was in her hospital room. I thought of the process that had brought us to this moment. I thought of how it all began four years earlier and how, almost unbelievably, Ann received a call from a nurse three months prior to that morning run. Now she was in a hospital bed hooked up to machines that were whispering to the nurse who checked their blinking lights regularly. Ann tried not to shift much, but the needles in her arms were forcing that weighty feeling of needing to move to become profound. Ann was not sick. In fact, she was much the opposite. Four years earlier we participated in a bone-marrow donor drive at Bale Chevrolet in Little Rock. The easy process of having a cheek swabbed seemed so long ago when the Be the Match Foundation nurse called Ann to tell her she was a match for a patient with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She asked if Ann would consider donating her stem cells to the patient in a procedure that would require a few shots and a couple of days in a hospital on the East Coast. Ann didnt hesitate. She said yes. Ive long been enamored of running alongside rivers. They offer a perspective of life that is so easily missed in that they are constantly moving, swelling and falling, churning and finding calm flats. Wildlife nestles around them in need of their life-giving sustenance, only to flee their wrath when the rains force the waters over the shoreline. As I ran, I thought of the domino fall of events that take place when one simple action leads to a profound change in the stratosphere of a single life. A few years ago, a couple of boys in my high school got into a fistfight off campus. The fight wasnt a big deal because neither boy really wanted to fight, and neither one was any good at it anyway. But a crowd of classmates circled around the combatants and cheered them on. That circle made it a big deal. That circle made the mob mentality, something the teachers and I preach against daily, to be the overriding voice, the sense-swallowing noise that pushed the two fighters forward. Fights between teenage boys never happen without the benefit of a crowd. When I found out about the fight, the crowd was my target. The next day I told the boys who witnessed the fight that they must report to the school auditorium during lunch. I warned them that I had the names of a few of them, and if there was a thought of not showing up, of calling my bluff to see if their name was on my list, thered be hell to pay if their name was actually there. A couple of dozen young men showed up. All of them good kids. Good kids who had allowed the moment to seize them in a negative way and behave in a manner beneath them. I told the two fighters they would eat lunch together at a special table in the main lobby until they worked things out. But my ire was reserved for those who had cheered on the fight. Bystanders have been the greatest cause of pain in human history. Those who choose to look away as opposed to speaking up have, by default, allowed the greatest degradations of the human spirit to occur. They were all bystanders, I told them. They all hid in the crowd and did not step forward to stop the fight. Except for one. I had been told repeatedly about one boy who acted as the voice in the wilderness and tried to intervene. I called him to the front of the room and gave him $100 in cash. I told him that speaking up was worth much more than any dollar sign, but this was a good visual for the others. I raised my voice to the other boys. I lamented their lack of backbone. They, in turn, knew better and were ashamed. They were told that they took from the community and therefore, in order to get back in good graces with the school, they must give back to the community. They must give back in a way that matched what they took. One boy asked what they should do. I told them that they would each figure it out individually. They would know it when they saw it. By the time I returned to the hospital after my run, Ann was more than halfway through the donation process. She joked with the sweet nurses and queried the doctor about the process. While there were minor discomforts associated with her stem-cell donation, we found that the emotional aspect was something more. Ann really wanted the transplant to work. Always the competitor, she wanted her team to win. But she knew there was a chance the transplant would not succeed. Walking into a situation where failure is a possibility isnt easy for anyone. It takes swallowing deep, digging in, and working for the best outcome. Guarantees in life become fewer the older we become. But there is one guarantee that never fades. If you dont try, you wont succeed. If you dont reach beyond yourself, no one else benefits. The important thing is to be open to the possibilities that saying yes to good things can create. After about four hours, Ann was unhooked from all the million-dollar gizmos that harvested her stem cells. We walked out of the hospital holding hands and returned to our hotel room so she could hydrate and get a bite to eat. Then we strolled through the city and found a pub so we could discuss things over a beer. The dominoes had fallen because of one simple step: Ann said yes to being swabbed at a bone marrow drive. She then followed up her initial affirmation with another yes when asked if she would go through the donation process. The rest is up to the fates, or the hand of God, or the good fortune of science, or all of the above. The act of giving is what we control. Everything else is left to chance. It made me think of those boys who watched the fight. Im not big on the oxymoron of mandatory volunteerism. However, unleashing good boys seeking to make things right on a community tends to have some positive results. I soon learned of flat tires changed for strangers. I heard of tutoring for struggling students. The walls echoed with the sounds of can drives, litter cleanups, and taking a deep breath to stop for just a moment in time to help someone in need. While we hope this powerful lesson is learned in daily life, its still sweet to see it uncovered in the face of something that started wrong. Giving is an innate quality in some people; they are just wired that way. For others, its a quality that must be mined. For both, its a breath of crisp air in the lungs and a jolt to the linings of the soul. Good things happen when people say yes to good things. The patient who received Anns stem cells is currently thriving, and for that we are profoundly thankful. The act of giving is just that--an action. Bystanders never make things happen. It takes people willing to give without knowing the outcome. This weekend, November 21st and 22nd, Ann, CARTI, and the boys of Catholic High will host a bone marrow donor drive at Catholic High School. If youre between the ages of 18-44, consider saying yes to being swabbed. Consider allowing the first domino to fall in something that could be beautiful and sublime. That boy who was given $100 in cash? He donated it to charity. Of course he did. Steve Straessle is the principal of Little Rock Catholic High School. Reach him at [email protected] to find out more about the swab drive.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 16:25:35 +0000
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