By Laurie Ryan
Our family said goodbye to our little Grandma Ryan this week. She was 92. We’ve often referred to her as our “oldest child.” She has been in our care in one way or another for better than 40 years. She was a Bostonian; you could tell right away once she started to speak. She lived in the poorest part of town. When she was about 3 she fell through a second-story window and nearly died. She lived the rest of her life with a steel plate in her head. Her mother died in childbirth shortly after the accident. She was left in the care of her grandparents, but they soon died too. At that point she and her siblings were separated and sent into foster care. Her last year of school was 5th grade. Foster care in the 1930s meant working in someone’s home as a maid or nanny.
As I was sitting in her service a question tickled my mind. What if Millie had been fortunate enough to have a mentor? What if for just an hour a week someone could have come to spend time with her? What if that person would have seen the promise of this little red-headed girl? What if she could have felt the thrill of playing games and reading books?
There are a million “What if…?” questions. Planting hope and providing support are exactly what Arborlawn’s Kids Hope USA program accomplishes. We don’t always see immediate results, and sometimes the kids move on to other schools. But what we do accomplish is to plant the seeds of hope in the life of one child. When and where those seeds will bloom and grow we may never know.
Won’t you consider standing up for one child through Kids Hope USA at J. T. Stevens Elementary next fall? There are a million Millies right here who need that one caring adult in their life.
For more information about being a Kids Hope USA mentor, contact Shirley Watkins or Laurie Ryan.
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