Brody Lives by “One Good Turn Deserves Another”
Brody students wait their turn for a head shave and a donation of their hair to Locks of Love.
In a spirit of “One good turn deserves another,” Brody Middle School did it again Wednesday morning.
Last year the Cardinal community drew together in connection with the annual Valentine’s Day dance to take an emotional stand against cancer in all its deadly forms. Staff and students directly impacted by the dread disease shared their stories. Haircuts raised money for Locks of Love, a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss.
The rising tide of goodwill lifted a lot of spirits and carried right on through to an encore event first thing Wednesday in the school gym.
The ongoing theme is “Through This Together,” a song written by Brody band teacher Brandon Oliver that was inspired by his father’s battle with esophageal cancer. The topic is a bummer. But the tune is upbeat, just like everything about an event that is absolutely celebratory. Presiding over it all, like she does everything at Brody, was Brandon’s mother, Sherri Oliver, the school’s office manager.
“They told Ed (her husband and Brandon’s father) that he was terminal and had weeks, maybe months left,” she told the crowd. “Since then we’ve had birthdays, and holidays and vacations together that they said we wouldn’t get to have.”
Physical education teacher Diana Repp, whose own dad beat back lung cancer since last year’s gathering, recited some seemingly grim statistics to the assembled students. She spoke of projections that run into the hundreds of thousands for the numbers of people expected to be diagnosed with or killed by cancer in 2015. But then came the good news: cancer survivors now number more than 14 million and counting.
Vice principal JoLynn May stopped on her way to school Wednesday to check in with her sister-in-law who is also beating the odds of her cancer. “I asked Traci what she could teach you kids,” May said. “She told me to tell you guys that she has learned from you; that you give her the will to keep fighting.”
Brody parent Dan Twelmeyer attended last year’s rally, let’s call this thing, and sat by in silence, still absorbing the reality of what then was a very recent diagnosis of sarcoma. This time he took the mic to give thanks for the support that buoyed him throughout the treatments that have knocked his illness into remission.
And so on…
Last year’s event benefitted the John Stoddard Cancer Center at Iowa Methodist Hospital in addition to Locks of Love. This year a new beneficiary was Valentines for Victims, a movement that arose after the tragic death in 1988 of Ken Eaton, a beloved teacher at Brody whose story we told last fall. Visit the Ken Eaton Foundation web site to learn more about this program.
It seems almost superfluous to mention that all of the mutual support and fundraising dovetails perfectly with the Brody International Baccalaureate curriculum’s emphasis on community service. But it’s not. There will always be plenty of jobs for people who have learned how to care and caring is a popular class at Brody.
