Laurels & lances: Big save, big shame
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Laurel: To co-workers you can count on. The people you work alongside can be just like family. That means they can be a confidante, a best friend or the person who bugs you more than anything. But sometimes they can also be real lifesavers.
For Alexis Simon, a Penn-Trafford special education teacher, her co-workers aren’t just fellow employees. They are real life savers. School nurse Rhaeann Shepler and six others were the difference between life and death when Simon had a heart attack in December. The six minutes of CPR and the use of a defibrillator before paramedics could arrive at Trafford Middle School are why she is here today.
They are also why her baby, Dominic, is here. Simon was pregnant when she went into cardiac arrest.
Shepler, guidance counselor Megan McGraw, substitute teacher Leah Fertal, teachers Gary Bacco and Michael Cleland, resource officer Jonathan Kitterman and Principal Roger Sullivan were all honored by the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association for their quick and vital intervention.
It’s an example of exactly how important competent and well-prepared employees are, particularly in a school setting.
Lance: To banning a legend. Pittsburgh Pirates great Roberto Clemente was not just a baseball player.
If that’s all he was, he would still be well worth reading about. His fantastic talent was part of a golden age for the Pirates that seems unlikely to be duplicated. Two World Series and 3,000 hits are a high bar.
But he was also a humanitarian who died on a flight to Nicaragua to deliver relief supplies — many purchased with his own money — to earthquake victims. He was a self-made success story who used talent to become a hero to kids in his native Puerto Rico, to the Black kids who looked like him and kids of all colors who wanted to be just like him.
So what about that is a reason for Duval County Public Schools in Florida to pull a children’s book about him from its shelves? The district says it is part of “steps to comply with Florida laws on library books.” The state is cracking down on books with potentially controversial references to race, color, sex, national origin and gender.
Does the book reference racism? Of course it does. He was a Black and Latino man who played ball in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It was a time the whole world grappled with racial issues. To ignore it in a book about him would be to erase an important part of his story.
Clemente’s story is about more than swinging a bat. It’s a story kids should read — and one that more than a few adults could benefit from hearing.