ESTA ES SU CASA--ST. LOUIS SEP / OCT 2013
“DEAR CHILD OF HONDURAS”
THE BEACON did a lovely job of editing together my last two dispatches on the death of Guillermo and other events (such as Chemo marching in the Independence Day parade). A must-see!
https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/32836/voices_dulick_guillermo_091813_
Last year, I made three trips to St. Louis for family emergencies, including the deaths of my brothers John and Bob. This year was, as the National League Champion St. Louis Cardinals like to say, a “Happy Flight!” An ecstasy from end to end, so much joy and grace, fabulous family time, great friends, eager students, gorgeous weather, and did I mention the bountiful food?
I scarcely had a minute to visit any schools last year, so this time I filled up my dance card. Jill Harris, a 1988 Parkway North grad, just celebrated with her class their 25th year reunion. “I’ve been teaching 19 years,” she mentions, and my mouth dropped. “That’s longer than I taught!” So she’s lapped me! She invited me to Hazelwood West Middle School, a big and beautiful place with wonderful kids to match. They had a million questions! And the kids collected 8 bags of clothes, and another teacher had a box of shoes. In the photos attached, you can see “my” kids in their new digs.
I made it up to Parkway North, where Melissa Pomerantz let me meet a couple of her classes, and guess what? One class was in the middle of “The Canterbury Tales,” a pilgrimage not unlike my life in Honduras, whose stories I try to tell with at least a bit of Chaucer’s celebration of our common humanity.
In fact, that is always my theme when I speak with students. Most Cardinals shirts are “MADE IN HONDURAS,” as are Parkway’s, St. Louis University’s, and lots more. And why? “Cheap labor!” the kids brightly answer. “But are some human beings worth less than others?” I ask. Honduras is as close as the clothes on your back. If you let the poor make your clothes, then let them touch your heart. In fact, “poverty,” which does not even appear in the kids’ textbooks, is best defined not by what folks DON’T have but by what we all share, our common humanity. I had to spend years in Honduras to appreciate that revelation, and I just have to hope that in a few minutes I can share that experience. Many of the kids already have a heart for the poor, and the pictures do most of the work. Although we never did get my “slideshow” to fully synch with the projectors, we improvised with 3 of my photobooks. I always tell Chemo’s story, which is my own as well, and the kids fall in love with him, too.
Parkway South had the theater ready for me during Academic Lab, and we had a big crowd, considering it was voluntary attendance. But they had been well prepared by their teachers, especially Jeanette Sipp-White and Julia Barnes with multiple handouts about the history, problems, and beauty of Honduras. My “presentation” was unique; the Diversity Club sorted through questions submitted by the students, chose the best and then conducted a kind of press conference with me. They chose well, basically leading me from point to point. “What’s your favorite memory?” Watching Chemo head off to school, every day!
Wydown Middle School just finished its new building and it might as well be an extension of its neighbor Washington University, so impressive is its architecture. But its real strength is the uncompromising commitment of Debra Solomon Baker and the “team” of teachers to digging deep roots in our social responsibility. The kids had a page of points to note as I talked, but the letters they wrote--to Chemo and to “my” other kids--were totally optional. Let me quote just a few.
“Dear child of Honduras,
First off, I hope you know that we love you! When you look up at the moon at night, it’s the same one that I see. In the end, we are all human beings with a heart.”
“I wish every human being in the world a good life and a chance to be safe. I have never lived scared in my life. If it was up to me, I would make everybody’s life better.”
“I feel kind of bad to live a life of being spoiled. Seeing your life really inspired me to change my ways and to go out of my way to help people.”
“Te prometo que si pudiera hacer algo por ti, yo lo haria. Asi que desde aqui te mando un saludo para que recuerdes que lo que importa no es lo que tienes; lo que importa es la fe que tengas.”
Selvidge Middle School in the Rockwood District is always a surprise. And Julie Buehler likes it that way! The surprise this time was that Julie was the only who actually ran my photos as a slideshow. I kept staring at the screen, “How did you do that?” “I don’t know!” Conspiracy theory! We filled the room with another teacher’s students as well and a number of the eighth graders remembered me from a previous visit, so they had even more questions than usual, about Chemo. I admit it, I like to get past the “big” picture (the poverty, the violence, the corruption, the drugs, the this and the that) and tell the stories of Chemo, Guillermo and Erlinda, Chepito, Maricela....
When Teresa Jorgen and I went to southwest Missouri to visit her former neighbors Hildur and Andy, who moved to the family farm there, I felt right at home. It was like another, even greener version of my Las Vegas. “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Flat.” Such friendly, pleasant, salt-of-the-earth folk, who had gathered for the auction of three barnsful of farm tools and implements, now that Grandma and Grandpa had passed on. I of course paid special attention to the foods, including schnitzel, all “hand-crafted” by Hildur, originally from Germany. A busy lemonade stand was staffed by daughter Selma and her friends, and they were making a sign: “Lemonade for Hondrurs 1$.” “Whatever we make here, Miguel, is for you,” Hildur explained. I knew she’d do something like that! Last year, she held a bake sale for Honduras, made all the cookies, cakes, and breads herself. So I asked her if I could try to sell Chepito’s drawings. People admired the art, but they came for the auction, they didn’t have extra funds, so I only sold four. I gave others to Selma and her friends. (There’s another 120, if you’re interested!)
OK, not everything about the visit was heavenly. I ran over my computer! You see, I thought I had already put my backpack in the trunk of Teresa’s car when I started the engine and backed up. What was THAT? I grabbed the computer from the bag and, trembling like a leaf, started it up. Fortunately it’s a MacBook Pro in the solid aluminum shell. It went on! Everything was there, I even tried the Internet. It wasn’t till later that I noticed the hairline cracks all over the screen, multiplying even as I watched, and the dented bottom, among other things.
The Apple Store at West County was buzzing like a hajj, first day of the iPhone 5, but I fought my way to the Genius Bar, where they assessed the damages at $790, even with my AppleCare contract. (You can sure tell Steve Jobs is dead!) But I trusted in...God, I guess, and they sent it off to Texas. It was back in 48 hours, only (only!) $300. But, as my sister Barb, who is a computer genius herself, said, “Considering all the damage, Mike, you basically got a new computer for $300.” I love my sister!
I loved her best this time when she arranged a visit to our nephew Nick, the son of my late brother Bob. He’s in another rural Missouri town, Farmington, but this time it wasn’t heaven. Our destination was Farmington Correctional Center, where Nick is serving a six-year sentence. It used to be a state mental hospital; now, razor wire lines the old walls like tinsel, glistening in the sun. They have so many rules I could not take a picture, though Barb did get through in her flip-flops despite a warning on the wall. The “offenders,” as they’re called, sit in a green chair, all facing the same direction at tables for four in a large lunchroom, and the visitors are allowed a “light hug” arriving and departing, a 5-second kiss (“no open mouth”) for spouses. But there’s no limit on how much you can crank out of the vending machines, and Nick was hungry!
Nick, 25, looked great, and he sure smelled great, very clean! And he’s doing great, it seems. He’s in a program that sounds a lot like the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Successful completion, which includes a substantial improvement in anger management as well as managing drug addiction, will take years off his sentence, along with reductions for “good behavior.” But when he’s “free,” he really has nowhere to go. Another nephew, my sister Nancy’s son Dan, who just graduated from Mizzou, is offering to get a place together. Nick could really use some good in his life!
Teresa’s nephew Bryan, 20, is a prisoner of a different sort, managing cerebral palsy. After an operation to straighten his legs, he started therapy at Ranken-Jordan. A fall bummed up his dad’s knee and a job at Maritz keeps his mom busy, so Teresa and I jumped in to take Bryan at 10:00 and pick him up at 4:00 every day. Just so you know how popular he is there, look at the video they made; Bryan appears in it at least three times, including the final, lingering shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ugjx2GJMU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I had a sort of Parkway North re-union of former students from multiple years of my time there, converging from the four points of the compass, one after another. Former teachers, too. An abundance I never had before. I wanted to “schedule” even more, and next time I will!
As soon as I got back to Honduras, Elio and Mema celebrated my birthday at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Tegucigalpa. Angelica was waiting for me, too, at her little “food truck” in front of the Nanking Hotel. She asked about each one of you! or at least so it seemed.
One shirt was a donation even before it got down here, from “Labor of Love,” a fundraiser run for Micah House, where kids are saved from the mean streets of Tegucigalpa. I asked one of the organizers, Jeanette Sipp-White at Parkway South, for a “Small,” because I didn’t want it for myself. I wanted it for Dennis, the autistic boy in nearby Paraiso. He loves to run!
It’s been 40 days since Guillermo died, an interval marked here by another celebracion. Erlinda, Guillermo’s widow (boy! does THAT sound strange!) spoke for all of us when she said it seems like yesterday. “But I don’t see him dead. Every time I think of him, I see him alive, here with me if I’m cooking or sewing or talking, anything, not dead.” She had a recent appointment of her own in Tegucigalpa for her diabetes, so she made a point of telling them about their negligence in Guillermo’s chemotherapy that killed him. And not just him. “Miguel, they all died.” Guillermo had been in a big room (a holding pen, it turns out) with about 20 other cancer patients at San Felipe Hospital. “Remember the man with one leg? He died. The young man who had a motorcycle? He died. The one next to Guillermo who kept kidding the nurses? He died.” She went through the list. Well, it’s a cancer ward, and there’s rarely anything resembling “early detection” here in Honduras, but, still, between the cancer and the chemo, they didn’t have a chance!
Now, how do I put this? Erlinda nervously asked me in private if more help were still possible. I am even more nervous, asking you! At least one dear friend in St. Louis raised the question on her own, and committed herself to a donation every paycheck for “Guillermo.” Friends were so generous with me in the States, but the challenge is still there, because the need is still there. I’m so sorry.
My heart filled up just thinking about seeing Chemo again, and he did not disappoint. “Where is it?” He meant the “official” jersey of the World Cup Honduras team that I promised him. They qualified the same night, at virtually the same minute, as the Cardinals went up on the Dodgers in L.A. for a Happy Flight to St. Louis. The screams and horns and blasts and caravans of fans outside the Nanking Hotel in Tegucigalpa seemed, in my mind, to be celebrating both events. Schools shut down the next day, anyone who could took the day off work, fast-food chains gave away Whoppers or whatever they sell, and stores had 50% off sales. So I got the shirt at the “exclusive” dealer in such merchandise, Diunsa. Oh my God, the place looked like the last minutes of the Titanic, jostling crowds dragging, carrying, throwing everything--mattresses, appliances, big boxes of things you only ever see at such sales, I tripped over someone’s life-size plastic reindeer for Christmas (almost knocked its damn antlers off!)--into the fray. Fortunately, the jersey sales had their own register, so I got out alive.
Or he meant the “extra” laptop I brought back from St. Louis. Somehow it had become inevitably his. Kathy Blundon, who teaches at Parkway West, gave me two of her gently used Apples. The newer model I gave to Lily, Elvis and Dora’s daughter who is teaching and studying in Tegucigalpa. A godsend! The older one I got spruced up by former student Adam Stirrat, tech genius enough to have been recognized by his grateful colleagues at Ladue High School as “Teacher of the Year.”
Or he meant the “tacos,” that is, soccer shoes I also got at 50% off. Now he looks like a pro.
So you see, he WAS happy to see me.
And I miss you already!
Love, Miguel
