“Hello, this is Chris.”
“Hi, Chris, it’s Tom Marchetti; does that ring any bells?”
“Gee, your name sounds familiar, but sorry, I’m not making the connection.”
“I was at RYLA; my mom is Sue Ma . . .”
“Oh, gee, yeah, TOM! I can’t believe I didn’t recognize your name. I remember you clearly.”
So it continued for a bit with Tom, a camper several summers ago at our Rotary District 5580 Rotary Youth Leadership Award camp. A rising high school senior then, he has graduated from college and is working in a professional sales position. He thought of me as someone he could contact as part of his outreach.
Before we wrapped up that phone conversation, I stopped to ask Tom what about RYLA has stuck with him. He didn’t hesitate before he told me this:
“You know that Spider Web challenge my family (team) did? We completed it, but I think almost all of us had touched the strings in some way. When our facilitators asked us after how we think it went, we all knew we had touched the string and at first no one wanted to say anything; we were so happy and relieved to complete it. I knew then what integrity was. We admitted it, tried it over, and accomplished it. I still think about that all the time.”
My head and heart were exploding! Continue reading
An Unlikely Master 
Recent comments