Like Fireflies They Flickered Through Darkness

Mark was still small and could sit on Rhonda’s lap in her chair while she was pushed into her therapist in Dallas. At this time he was old enough to run along side her chair as we bumped, bumped along over the rough Bermuda lawn around the old school building.

This classroom her young teacher had established was their’s only for the morning. In the afternoon she had to give the room up to another class. Marsha Palmatary agreed to take her students to an upstairs room The steps were wide and steep. She was undaunted, though. Along with four other students who took hold of each side of the chair, the back and the brace across the front. Slowly and carefully together they all carried Rhonda up the steps so she could stay with them.

The little group of children were like a fire fly that flickered and sputtered, here and there and all through the darkness of the world. It glowed a sweet message, distracting all society from the sorrowful thought that there simply was no hope for them.

Marsha’s field trip to a pecan grove was a success and was the turning point for their learning experiences. The mother’s contributed, wieners, marshmallows and hot chocolate. They brought along sticks made from coat hangers to roast the marshmallows and wieners. A heavy tarpaulin these little ones worked together as they struggled to pull the large drop cloth under one of the trees. The work was worth the effort and this brilliant teacher brought their minds into a world they had never seen before.

The sleeping giant called Special Education yawned and stretched like Gulliver in his travels while little people busily became involved all around. The giant was looking all about at all the new found potential and realized he had not been aware they were even there. Years later these were the ones who picked up the jobs others didn’t want.