Part of the fun of social media sites like Facebook has to be reconnecting with people and places from my childhood. There is a Facebook group of hundreds of people who "Grew Up in Overland Park," and the memories that brings when someone posts a photo or a news clipping from some part of my growing up years there is such fun.
A closer-knit group I see on Facebook are those of my classmates (and teachers) from both grade and high school. It, too, is wonderful to jog our memories of times past -- sometimes happy, sometimes embarrassing -- but always interesting to me. One of the nicest connections I have made in recent months is with my third grade teacher, Mary Wiles. While I have had many teachers who have inspired and challenged me; some who I never appreciated either as an educator or human being, Miss Wiles was just plain kind. She had a way of engaging me in learning that I (obviously) never forgot.
Perhaps the best memory I have of time spent in Room 103 were those afternoons after noon recess when she read to the class. Be it a hot Kansas spring or snowy winter, it was pleasant to sit and listen as she read from one of the books from the school library.
My favorite was St. Therese and the Roses by Helen Walker Homan. I could not say why I recall this so clearly, except that it had to have been the most perfectly written children's book on a saint I had ever seen. I remember Miss Wiles, whose voice was soft, kind and friendly, reading perhaps a chapter each afternoon, and I would hang on every word. It was amazing to me how this great saint could be brought to life first in the way the story was written, but even more so as Miss Wiles read it out loud to the some 32 of us in the class. I still recall hearing about St. Therese as a small child, and how in childlike simplicity wondered why that little "baby Jesus wouldn't toss that ball He was holding" to her, even after she "promised" to toss it back to Him. Of course, as an adult I understand that she was referring to a statue of the Infant of Prague, who holds the world in His hand, but at the time I remember thinking how incredible it was that a child as young as she was would like "to play catch" with the Little Infant.
More than that, though, it was evident that Miss Wiles was as engaged in the story as any of us. Some parts she read with enthusiasm -- especially when Therese approached the Pope to petition joining the convent as a young teen; at others, particularly when the young saint lost her mother to cancer, she read with sadness and pain -- as if she were there witnessing the event.
It wasn't too long before the story came to a close, with the beloved saint promising to "shower the earth with roses" after her death. In the weekly visit to the library, I remember searching for that hardbound book with the blue cover and the simple illustrations scattered throughout the story. I wanted to hold it in my hands and read the words that Miss Wiles had brought to life.
I know that I checked the book out multiple times during my grade school years; I never tired of rereading the blessed life of this young saint.
So for what it is worth, I don't believe that I was ever much of a reader before third grade; it only took one very compelling and well-written story, read with simplicity by one of my favorite teachers to spark an interest in the written word that I still have today. Amazing.
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