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Lyn Riddle

On friendships to fill a life

by Lyn Riddle

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Jul
22

Monty Long celebrated her 60th birthday by jumping out of an airplane.

With a parachute, of course, and a skydiving instructor.

She’s also rediscovered skiing, and tore her ACL in the process. But that didn’t hold her back as evidenced by a recent ski trip to Canada.

She’s hopped on the back of a motorcycle with one son, hunted deer with another.

It’s all part of her desire to live life to the fullest – to create a bucket list of sorts. The things left to do.

She said last year’s skydiving trip with her oldest son was the most empowering thing she’s ever done. Afterwards, she told herself, “It’s time to get out of your comfort zone.”

Long and her husband Lee have been married 29 years. He owns Long Utilities, a subdivision builder, and for the most part she stayed home and raised their three boys.

Her world revolved around football and all the other trappings of child life. The people she associated with were largely the mothers of her son’s friends.

“I didn’t make the time for friends, she said.

Then one by one, the boys grew to that independent stage where even though they live with you, they don’t really.

So she got to know her neighbors in Bruce Farm. And that was step one of the active life she lives now.

Sixty percent of the women in the subdivision get together once a month for lunch. Eight get together for weekly dinner. Some travel together – like the ACL-tearing trip. They play bridge. They stay at each other’s beach or mountain houses.

“How can you have so many people you’re so crazy about?” Long wonders sometimes. There are so many activities the husbands sometimes feel abandoned.

They’ve been to New York City, on a cruise to the Caribbean.

“We’re absolutely insane,” she said.

Long is a fervent traveler, taking each of her sons to Europe and going twice with the whole family to Alaska, once to Hawaii. New Orleans, Las Vegas, a helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon.

A girlfriend of a son called at 10 p.m. one night and said she was trolling around Travelocity and found a great deal to Cancun. The plane left at 9 a.m. the next morning. From Charlotte. Long was on the plane after spending much of the night digging out summer clothes.

“I don’t care where or what accommodations,” she said. “There’s nothing I don’t want to see.”

So now that’s she’s got this empowerment going, she’s decided to get more for her 61st birthday in October. Another jump.

She also wants to slide down a zip line – she hears Costa Rica is best for that. A balloon ride would be nice. Also some hiking on the Appalachian Trail. She got that idea from a picture she found of herself recently at two years old, standing in front of an AT trail marker.

Ireland. Martha’s Vineyard.

“I could call somebody and within a week we’d be off somewhere,” she said.

Her life, she said, for a long time was filled with maleness thanks to the men she loves. Even her two springer spaniels and her cat are male.

“Nobody sees eye to eye with girl things,” she said.

With her friends, she has added an outlet for living – and for developing bucket lists.

“I never realized how important friendships are,” she said.

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Lyn Riddle

On remembering summer days

by Lyn Riddle

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Jul
17

South Carolina Information Highway – known colloquially as Sciway – has some suggestions for how to spend July in South Carolina.

I love this online service from James Island. It offers a thorough look at the goings on in our state, the festivals, the cool websites, the history.

So when I saw the e-mail announcing July events, I eagerly opened it and found a path back into my childhood summers with my grandmother.

Here’s what they said:

Feast on a peach – This year’s expected to be a bumper crop – which means 60,000 tons of peaches grown on 18,000 acres – more than Georgia, the Peach State. The prevailing smell of my grandmother’s summertime kitchen was ripe peaches. With pudgy, nimble fingers and a well-worn paring knife, she’d strip those beauties clean and either slice them into a bowl for breakfast or a casserole dish for cobbler.

Sometimes we’d pass Taylor’s Peach Shed, but never went in. Friends and family regularly brought peaches along with homegrown tomatoes and cantaloupe and all manner of vegetables to her five-room home in Greer.

I am sure my aged mind has warped the memory but it seems like that backdoor slapped with visitors every 10 minutes. And just as no one ever left her house without her giving them something, no one arrived empty handed either.

Live large on local shrimp. Now this was one foodstuff I rarely saw at my grandmother’s table but we sure ate it at Myrtle Beach for that one-week vacation – always July 4 – every year. We’d stay at a motel on the oceanfront. My uncle didn’t believe in making reservations, but we never wanted for a clean bed and an ocean view. Sciway mentioned paring the shrimp with corn on the cob, hush puppies – yes – and cold beer – a definite no in my family.

Hit the road. We spent a lot of time at home, but on special weekends one of my aunts would invite us all up to her place in the North Carolina mountains near Tuxedo. This usually involved driving the Willys Jeep around the little lake my uncle created. Yes, we were 12 and yes, we did get it stuck in the mud, which resulted in my uncle pulling it out and saying, “Ready to go again.” My cousin and I always wanted to spend the night in the silver trailer by ourselves, but if it was raining we were out of luck. Grandma wanted to fall asleep the sounds of raindrops meeting tin.

Catch a wave. Already covered that but Sciway also says go surfing, which was not something any one of us had heard much about 40 years ago.

Sit and sip. Or in other words, drink tea. This was the only drink found in my grandmother’s house as far as I recall. I’m sure she had milk and juice but that was not on my menu. There was nothing puny about my grandmother’s tea. It was steeped and sweet. Very.

Years ago no one asked for sweet tea. It just was. That was the only way it was made. Now the modifier is used universally.

Sciway suggests taking your sweet tea, inviting someone over and sitting in rocking chairs for some conversation. Days at Grandma’s generally ended up this way. She never had central air so outside offered the coolest spot. The older folks would gather in her effusively landscaped backyard to sit on metal shell chairs and recount the events of the day.

The young ones would nest on her wrap-around porch, usually spying on the neighbors, some of who were actually quite interesting. One man shunned his front door for a window. We never figured out why he left and entered his house that way.

It occurs to me many of Sciway’s suggestions trade on a stereotypical view of the South. But then stereotypes would not be without some basis in fact.

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Lyn Riddle

On connections to last a lifetime

by Lyn Riddle

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Apr
30

Six childhood friends.

Those who went to college chose different schools.

One married soon after graduation.

Two got jobs.

All but one left their hometown of Martin, Tenn., after graduation in 1971. They ended up in Greenville, St. Petersburg, Fla., Knoxville, Memphis.

Yet, at least once every year – sometimes more often than that – they spend several days together relishing each other’s company.

These women in their mid-50s are touchstones for one another. Despite the differences in the lives they have led, the men they married (and, for some, divorced), the children they bore or not, the money they earned, they have stayed together just like the characters in Cassandra King’s novel “Same Sweet Girls.”

Greenville optometrist Brenda McGregor – her friends call her Pug – is one of the women.

She is back from the annual trip – this year they went to Treasure Island, near St. Petersburg.

“One girl picks a date and we go,” McGregor said. “This year she surprised us with this beautiful waterfront home owned by a doctor. We felt like we were in Architectural Digest.”

McGregor talks about the women with such joy and intimacy it’s easy to feel you know them, too.

Janet: who arranged for the house, divides her time between St. Pete and Franklin, N.C., married her high school sweetheart, divorced, remarried and is now retired from the insurance business. Her father picked the girls up in a Silver Cloud Rolls.

Louisa: also lives in St. Pete, is a widow with deep spirituality, the exotic one who does yoga and has a gift for seeing meaning in things others overlook.

Bonita: worked three jobs to raise her children during a difficult marriage, is remarried and lives in Knoxville.

Carol: sold a hotel renovation business two years ago, the most creative of the bunch who can wrap a present so beautifully you don’t want to unwrap it – “Our Martha Stewart.”

Donna: lives in Martin and is a funeral director with grandchildren she adores.

Pug: got her name because her brother upon her birth said “Uncle Joe’s pug is cuter than that baby” and describes herself as the “boring one,” married 30 years to an engineer, retired two years ago from her practice.

There is a litany of information about the value of long-term friendships. Journalist Jeffrey Zaslow wrote a book about 10 women from Ames, Iowa, who have virtually the same experience. No distance or passage of time diminishes the bond.

It might be seen as an oddity in these times as people move all over the country chasing dreams and jobs. The false ties of texting and e-mail and most assuredly Facebook are not stand-ins and, in fact, probably keep folks from forging true bonds.

It’s not that the women of Martin, Tenn., did not change. It’s that they changed in ways that were expected and they have a rich history to hold onto. No need for explanation. Comfort. Fun. Sometimes pain. Always a profound connection.

This year the Martin girls played board games and prepared exquisite dinners. They walked the beach every morning. And of course had their time together where they tell each other what has happened in the months since they last met. Nothing is held back. This year offered two major surprises, but they’re not for public consumption.

It was a year to rejoice because Bonita marked the important fifth year as a cancer survivor. They gave her a pink necklace and bracelet designed by Emily Ray, whose mother died of breast cancer and who donates $5 of every sale to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Each year someone is honored for something special that’s happened, a shower for a grandma to be, a retirement, a marriage. The rites of passage through life shared with someone you’ve known almost as long as you’ve been lived.

And there’s an added benefit.

“We’re all a hoot,” McGregor said.

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Lyn Riddle

On raising children

by Lyn Riddle

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Apr
3

When my children were growing up, I often wished I had a handbook for raising children.

Something like when they do this, you do this and all will be well with the world and the children will grow up happy and healthy.

Sure there was Dr. Spock and one I can’t even think of the name now that were must reads in the 1980s.

I just googled looking for the name and can’t find it, but I see today’s young parents have “Raising the Spirited Child” and “Raising Children who Think for Themselves” and even “Raising the Vegetarian Child.”

It just wasn’t easy, but then it never is, in any generation. Especially with the first child. You analyze every action and wonder if I do or say this will I cause him irreparable harm. I convinced myself for the longest time that I stifled my oldest son’s creativity when at 4 I refused to buy him red tennis shoes. Red? White was so much better.

All this to get back to my main point: This morning the associate pastor at my church handed me a single page of information that could have served as my playbook for childrearing. It was from Search Institute, a Minneapolis based non-profit whose mission is to promote healthy children.

On this sheet of paper was a list of 40 developmental assets children should have to be successful in life. Things like family support, caring school climate, service to others, creative activities, motivation, positive values, decision making, sense of purpose.

And of course there is self-esteem, which so many well-educated yet misguided people have mocked in recent years.

The list seems like common sense stuff. Tell the truth. Read for pleasure. Be creative. Serve others.

But here’s the rub.

Researchers were careful to say there was no magic number for how many attributes children need, but the data showed 31 of the 40 were “worthy, though challenging.”

Eight percent of the children studied had 31 or more.

Seventeen percent had zero to 10.

The average was 18.

And the number got worse as the child aged. In sixth grade, the average number of assets was 23, by 12th grade it was 17.8.

The research also showed it made no difference where the child lived – rural, suburban or urban. Socioeconomic status mattered not. Neither did race.

Here’s some more stats:

Of the children with zero to 10 attributes, 45 percent had problem alcohol use, 62 percent were violent, 38 percent used drugs and 34 percent were sexually active.

On the other end of the spectrum, 3 percent of children with more than 31 attributes had problems with alcohol, 6 percent were violent, 1 percent used drugs and 3 percent were sexually active.

As we try to teach our children, all action – parental and otherwise – has consequences.

The associate pastor gave me this information because he was telling me about the meeting of the General Assembly of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship at our church, Pelham Road Baptist, April 23 and 24. The overarching theme of the meeting is being intentional about student ministry.

That means making student ministry a congregational effort rather than a department in the church. One session for student ministers is based on Search Institute’s study. The meeting planners know churches cant compete with new media and television and video games, but they can compete when it comes to relationships. Several of the assets Search Institute identified had to do with children having relationships with adults other than their parents.

It’s yet another stab at living that age-old African proverb: It takes a village to raise a child.

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Lyn Riddle

On tackling poverty, together

by Lyn Riddle

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Mar
19

It’s an old-fashioned gospel sing on Sunday at Pendleton Street Baptist Church.

Kyle Matthews, Larry McCullough & Chosen Generation, USC Upstate Gospel Choir

Joyful Sound from North Greenville University and Bethel Full Gospel Baptist Church Praise Dancers all will be singing praises in what’s being billed as a Musical Extravaganza.

An extravaganza with a deep underpinning to do good.

It is one of those awesome occasions when community groups work together for a common cause. And as we have seen over and over again in Greenville, when groups get together, things get done.

This time it’s to benefit United Ministries, Triune Mercy Center and Greenville Area Interfaith Hospitality Network to help them combat poverty.

The three have been collecting quarters to put on display Sunday. The goal is 50,000, a quarter to represent every person in Greenville County living below the poverty line. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers anyone who makes less than $10,830 to be living in poverty. For a family of four, the threshold is $22,050.

The folks at Triune, United Ministries and GAIHN witness the circumstances of Greenville County’s poor every day.

On Wednesday at Triune some 70 people showed up to get groceries and clothes. But 15 had to be turned away with nothing. Imagine what that looked like.

“There is so much need out there,” said the Rev. Deb Richardson Moore. “So many people struggling, so many children born into unstable households that are going to perpetuate poverty if we can’t do something to break the cycle.”

Moore said progress was being made but then came the economic downturn.

“It knocked us backward,” she said. “We are seeing so many new people who possibly have never gone anywhere before.”

But amid it all, there are stories of hope.

Like Bobby who spent three years and four months sleeping under bridges and now owns a home and speaks to college students about life on the street. And John who overcame addiction and then spent seven months looking for a job before being placed as a temp in a local business. He has since been hired fulltime and his boss is redesigning Triune’s Web site.

Moore said the gospel sing is the first time the three organizations have come together for a fundraiser.

In the broadest possible terms, the three have similar missions – to help those in need. But each plays its own role.

United Ministries is by far the biggest of the organizations. With 27 paid staffers, the agency supplies emergency assistance, prepares people for jobs, offers adult education and operates the Place of Hope, which provides services for the homeless such as mail, showers and laundry as well as social services.

GAIHN works with local congregations to provide emergency housing and meals to homeless families.

Triune was established about a century ago as a Methodist church. It has since become an independent interdenominational church that offers Sunday worship services as well as a soup kitchen, clothes closet, food pantry, and linen closet.

Moore said for the past several years representatives of Triune, United Ministries and Greenville Mental Health have met every Monday afternoon to share information and offer support for one another.

This is not easy work.

The Upstate Homeless Coalition works to find gaps in services and meet those needs for a 13-county area. Representatives of a host of agencies serve on the board and businesses throughout the area work closely with the organization.

To say poverty – and its cousin homelessness – are bigger problems than any one organization can conquer seems obvious.

But sometimes it seems we don’t act like we know it. Sunday might be a good time to show we understand and appreciate this work the agencies do.

Fifty-thousand quarters represents $12,500 raised so far.

The concert is free, but an offering will be taken. Asked whether people should bring quarters, Moore laughs and says, “Oh, no. We’re hoping they will be putting in extremely large bills and checks.”

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Lyn Riddle

On what it means to be a hero

by Lyn Riddle

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Mar
19

There’s nothing fancy about the way Generations Group Homes looks, but it is magical nonetheless.

Boys, abused and victimized by others, arrive at the southern Greenville County facility after committing some sort of sexual act against someone else. It is their second chance. For many the only other choice would have been juvenile jail.

Often they come in shackled, wearing a jumpsuit and carrying a plastic bag with a toothbrush inside. They are 13 to 17 years old.

The boys enter a regimented life of chores and responsibilities and consequences when they fall short. They go to school. They dress up in slacks, shirts and ties for field trips. They sleep in dorms and more often than not cover their twin beds with comforters bearing the name of their favorite sports teams. They have birthday parties, many for the first time. Musical chairs is the No. 1 attraction at the fall festival.

In short, they get to have the sort of lives they should have had before.

And that largely is because the staff at Generations has managed to create something special among co-workers. They’re not just colleagues, but an extended family, caring for as many as 46 boys at a time.

They show respect, one to the other. They care when concerns outside of work bear down. They stand in for one another when necessary.

“We have each other,” said Charlene Jones, the child care services director.

And that’s vital because this is not easy work. It’s messy.

Boys come in angry. They throw desks. They curse. They refuse to participate.

But then the magic happens.

They notice a staff member cares, maybe it’s their counselor, but it might also be the cook. They see the other boys following the rules, getting privileges. They make a connection with an adult, often the first they’ve had in their lives.

With sexual abuse, the problem has little to do with sex and everything to do with power. The boys felt powerless in their victimization and they acted out.

At Generations, they become part of a group, something bigger than themselves, and that basic human need to belong is met.

“Kids will go to any group that accepts them,” said Kathleen Reynolds, the chief executive officer. “That’s why gangs are so prevalent.”

Reynolds founded Generations in 1991 as a tribute to her younger sister who was raped on a date. The trajectory of her sister’s life changed immediately. Reynolds wanted to make sure others had a different choice.

The nature of the program change in 1999 when Reynolds questioned whether they needed to restrain the boys as often as they did. She discovered Cornell University had developed therapeutic crisis intervention, which begins with preventing a conflict from developing in the first place and then offers tools to de-escalate those that do.

“Instead of rule enforcer, we’re teachers,” said Brian Clark, the facility director.

He said they break through the walls the boys have erected to protect themselves through mutual respect, investing in them with sensitivity and by simply being available. That means noticing when someone is having a bad day or a tough time with homework. That means stopping and taking the time to talk.

It is offering a gentle yet firm hand.

And then comes more magic. Once a boy realizes what happened to him is not his fault, that he is a worthy individual, the desire to act out in that way vanishes.

And here’s how they know. They surveyed all the boys who had come through the program in the past five years – about 400. They discovered 98 percent had not had another sexual offense and 92 percent had no offense at all. And they counted traffic tickets as offenses.

In the education building there is a wall of heroes that lists the names of boys who finish the tough program before their sentence is up. It also lists the names of donors.

There should be another list: staff members. Heroes all.

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Lyn Riddle

On friends with a purpose

by Lyn Riddle

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Mar
5

Books brought them together. Breast cancer gave them a cause.

The Whine and Wine Book Club started meeting about three years ago, every third Tuesday of the month. It was as much a time for laughter and socializing as for discussing literature.

Then came the month they read a book by Jill Conner Browne of Sweet Potato Queen Fame, the franchise that offers help for every occasion such as raising children for fun and profit (yes, that is the name of one of her books).

Club member Jessica Traynham had arranged a surprise. She had e-mailed Browne and asked her to call during the meeting. And Browne did.

The women were so taken with the book, the woman, the night, they decided to start a Sweet Potato Queen chapter.

But Traynham and friend Juli Spann were not content to just dress up in big red wigs and costumes that made their you know whats much bigger than normal and march in Christmas parades.

“The fun can only go so far,” Traynham told Spann.

They settled on breast cancer awareness and called themselves the Ta-Ta Queens. Many Sweet Potato Queen chapters, including the original group, raise money for certain causes, but these Upstate ladies took it a step farther. They established a non-profit, the only Sweet Potato Queen chapter in the country to do so.

“We want to make a difference in our community,” Spann said.

They promote early detection and the importance of mammograms. They’ve joined with Race for the Cure and other events focused on breast cancer. They wear pink and have a 14-foot-long pink trailer for parades.

“Those big red wigs do make people notice us,” Spann said. “And that’s the point.”

Last year they staged their first fundraiser. It was at the Upcountry History Museum and about 150 people showed up, all by word of mouth. They made a little more than they spent, Spann said.

This year is a whole ‘nother story.

They are having the event at the Hilton Garden Inn. It’s A Royal Cotillion for Queens and Their Kings. Food, drink, auction, band.

And Browne.

Not only will the original queen attend the April 24 event, but she has waived her $15,000 speaking fee. And she’s bringing one of her crowns to be auctioned.

The reason is the group wants to do more than pass out literature and be big-haired pretty. They want to provide every woman battling breast cancer in the area – from those just diagnosed to those recovering from surgery – with The Royal Treatment Package.

“It will be full of things to make their life easier,” Spann said.

Tailored to individual needs, the package will include coupons, gift cards, housecleaning services, pillows to place under the arm during recuperation, information on where to get wigs or bras. Browne has also given them a number of autographed books to include.

“Humor helps in any situation,” Spann said.

They intend to ask doctors to offer information about the package to patients and their families, who in turn call and request one.

Spann said it is especially gratifying when a cancer patient tells her “You made me laugh.”

Everyone in the Ta-Tas has been touched by breast cancer. One is a survivor. Others have aunts or cousins, mothers or sisters who have battled the disease.

And at every appearance something touching happens.

At one, a woman asked one of the members to go with her to her next appointment.

“She wanted one of us to go hold her hand,” Spann said.

And one of them did.

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Lyn Riddle

On giving teachers the help they deserve

by Lyn Riddle

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Feb
5

I received an e-mail from a teacher the other day. She portrayed a world we don’t normally see.

Teachers working 50 or more hours a week (paid for 40). Grading papers at home. Meeting with parents after school. Buying supplies not only for the classroom but also for children who can’t afford them. And that includes clothes, book bags and Band-Aids.

“Ask anyone with a teacher in the family and they know,” the teacher wrote. “It is just wrong to think we work 8-3.”

The teacher said make no mistake. She is grateful for her job, but anyone who thinks teachers are overpaid – like our legislators who think teachers should not be paid for days students are not in school – should go get a teaching degree and see for himself what it’s like.

“Those built-in 10 days we have in our contracts when students do not attend school are only the ones for which we get paid,” she said. “All the days during the summer, weekends, etc., are on our own time. We get no overtime, but we do what we do because it has to be done.”

She worked eight days this summer with no pay. She gets $250 a year for supplies and estimates it doesn’t cover a tenth of what she truly needs to teach properly.

But she has a bigger point: public education represents the future of our state, a state that invested hundreds of millions of dollars to get Boeing to built a plant near Charleston.

“Shame on you!” she wrote. “Investing in children and our public education system will provide a highly qualified workforce.”

She said she provides love and counseling and performs negotiations that would impress the United Nations, nurses wounds, seen and unseen, and teaches.

“I worry every day if my students are getting enough to eat when they aren’t at school, cry when they have to move again because their parents have to move for lack of employment, and sometimes am the only person there for them at awards day or parent/teacher night,” she wrote.

She also takes classes that she pays for. If professional development days are eliminated, it removes not only the opportunity, but also the incentive for teachers to learn and grow in their profession.

“Of course, what am I expecting? Do I think that politicians can afford to do without their staffs or something?”

But she’s not just complaining. She has suggestions:

Stop the sales tax holiday, which generally saves a family no more than $30.

Make awards programs such as Palmetto gold, silver, SAT award, teacher of the year every other year, not annual.

Give the $250 supply money to first and second year teachers and science teachers who often buy lab supplies themselves.

Make judiciary, legislative, corrections and other state employees pay for professional development themselves.

Cut or reduce the Education and Economic Development Act to eliminate expensive mandates.

Make all state employees take a furlough.

There were several more, but the picture she is trying to paint is clear: school districts are a shapeless entity without a face, easy targets for state-mandated cuts.

The faces we should see when we talk about reducing school funding are of those teachers in the classroom and the children who look up to them.

Here’s how she put it: “I am a teacher because I love children and I hope that what I do in the classroom inspires my students to do greater things in this world.”

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Lyn Riddle

On taking the positive route

by Lyn Riddle

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Feb
5

Dexter’s on the side of the room, lying down.

Freddie’s beside him, sitting regally.

Across the room, Gracie clearly does not know what to make of those two. She a bichon frise. And she’s wearing a pink sweater.

Dexter would have trouble sitting comfortably in the back seat of a car, he’s so big. He’s a 130-pound Great Dane on his way to probably 185 pounds. After all he’s seven months old. His paws are the size of a mayonnaise jar lid.

Freddie is a standard poodle and has the face of an expectant child.

They are at Speedy Paws for obedience training with Sue Conklin, who just won a national award for an essay she wrote about training with kindness.

“She’s better than the dog whisperer,” said Angela Blaugher, Freddie’s owner. “It is happy training, and Fred responds well to that.”

Blaugher says her friend brought an old dog believed to be untrainable to Conklin and six months later it was easy to live with.

With a little liver biscotti or Z-filets chicken, Conklin has these dogs eating out of her hand, literally and figuratively.

She learned it all from horses. She and her husband managed a thoroughbred horse farm in Pennsylvania for nine years. They trained in the way of the horse whisperer, gentle, consistent and positive.

When they left that job she went to a local PetSmart, prepared to be a groomer. Shortly she was the trainer. She’s been in business for herself – the Puppy Nanny – for six years in South Carolina. She’s trained 2,000 dogs – or rather their owners.

But she always had a story she wanted to tell. The story of Pam and Ginger, the subject of the essay judged among the top entries to the Association of Pet Dog Trainers contest. Ginger, a greyhound, lived with Pam, who raised and showed the breed for 20 years. She was no stranger to dog training, obviously.

But Ginger. She was a work all her own. She was afraid of a leash. Not a great trait for a show dog.

“She would run into her crate and hide with her butt facing the door,” Conklin wrote.

Pam was using old-school techniques, choke chains and pops that just backfired with Ginger.

Conklin went to Pam’s home and decided the way to get Ginger to accept the leash was with a clicker and some cheese. Conklin clicked, Ginger responded and earned some cheese.

Conklin put the coiled leash on the table. Clicked. Ginger looked at the leash. Got cheese. Then they spread the leash out, held it, held it close to Ginger, touched her with it. Ginger got some cheese. Finally Ginger put her head in the leash loop. Herself.

“Clicker training had saved her relationship with Ginger,” Conklin wrote.

Ginger was going to be a show dog. She was to be entered in the Greyhound Nationals.

Then one day not long before the contest someone left the door open at Pam’s house.

Ginger ran out, into the street and was hit by a car.

“Pam and I were devastated,” Conklin wrote.

But the good that came was a friendship for Pam and Sue as well as Pam’s conversion to another way of training.

In the years since Pam has trained three puppies that won Best Puppy at the Greyhound Nationals. She’s trained AKC champions, too.

“When she gets advice from handlers who think that she should crack down on her dogs more, she tells them that she has tried that and it didn’t work,” Conklin wrote.

And then she tells them about Ginger.

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Lyn Riddle

On paying it forward

by Lyn Riddle

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Jan
23

As the members of the Flock Sunday school class at First Presbyterian Church of Greenville left class they were given an envelope that said simply Merry Christmas.

Inside was a letter that began, “Please accept this gift from my wife and me as a dedication of love and duty to our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It went on to talk about hard times and how much they wanted others to share the blessings God had given them. The author, who did not reveal his name, hoped class members would use the gift themselves if needed, help another family, grant an impoverished child’s Christmas wish or support a missionary.

The envelope contained five $100 bills so crisp one member said they looked like they had just been printed. There were 50 envelopes, one for each couple. That amounted to $25,000 from someone who did not want to be thanked, did not want publicity. Just wanted to sit back and watch the magic unfold.

Denton Burnette, as coordinator of the gift giving, is one of the few people who knows the donor’s identity.

“They could have easily written a check for $25,000, but they wanted to get other people involved, to make it more personal,” he said.

And personal it has been. Some in the class, facing their own misery with lost jobs or other problems, paid bills or bought Christmas for their children. One woman took her child out for a Mexican dinner, the first time in a year they’d been able to eat out. And they even ordered queso sauce.

One gave money for dishes and clothes to a woman whose mobile home had burned down. Another gave the $500 to Safe Harbor, the shelter for abused women, and was able to get his company to not only match the amount but also to double it – $1,500 for a more than worthy organization.

An 11-year-old boy got a bicycle, helmet and Pittsburgh Steelers gym bag. An unemployed father was able to buy presents for his children.

Fifty times over and more. A gift. More often than not, parents said the exercise had a profound impact on their children, who played a big role in deciding where the money should go and in giving it out when the time came.

“We’re always telling children to do things,” said John Stelling. “I’m glad my children saw me doing something.”

Stelling’s wife Robin and daughter Carlisle bought $130 in groceries for a classmate’s family. Then he took $300 to Triune Mercy Center for three homeless families. He also gave up all the jackets and sweatshirts he had in his trunk from this promotional products company.

He put some money in the collection plate at church. And the last $10 he used to buy McDonald’s hamburgers for the people who live under the Pete Hollis Highway bridge. He and his daughter as well as a friend and his daughter went down there with a truckload of firewood they had cut and the bag of burgers.

There were four or five tents, a makeshift stand and a handful of people. One guy approached Stelling. They talked about their lives.

“He revealed his situation to me and that hit home,” Stelling said.

The man had been a classmate more than two decades before at Wade Hampton High School. They had algebra together.

“He was ahead of me intellectually and from an academic standpoint,” Stelling said.

On that December day, the economic divide could not have been greater. But as men, they met as equals beside that railroad bed, one reaching out to the other because someone else had reached out first.

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