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Despite ordeal, Scout Ranch survivor says he 'got off easy'

Posted by Billy email MADBillyD@aol.com on Friday, January 02, 2009 10:12:46 PM
A Boy Scouts salute to Dale Rooks by Joey Harrison.
 

Back to the "same old, same old."

With those simple words, 15-year-old Thomas Auen summed up the beautiful normalcy that fills his home at Christmastime this year.
Small signs betray the ordeal Thomas and his family have endured over the past six months - a gift bag overflowing with cards from well-wishers, a handicap-accessible ramp at the front door, a slight limp when Thomas walks forward to greet a visitor.

But if a specter of the tornado that ravaged the Little Sioux Scout Ranch clouds Thomas' life, it isn't apparent in his wide smile or his sparkling blue eyes.
Six months ago, that storm changed some lives and ended others. Four boys died and 42 were injured when a tornado hit the Boy Scout camp in Monona County, Iowa.
Since then, Thomas has undergone 10 surgeries, months of physical therapy and months in a wheelchair, working toward a new version of normal.

For most kids, normal isn't being greeted by President Bush. It's not having a new trachea constructed out of cartilage from your rib. It's not having football players carry you up the stairs in your wheelchair on your first day of high school.

 

(Read the whole story from above Despite ordeal, Scout Ranch survivor says he 'got off easy'.)

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Good conduct spreads joy at Omaha's Uta Halee Girls Village

Posted by Billy email MADBillyD@aol.com on Friday, December 26, 2008 7:18:03 PM

Last Christmas, Tiffany Buchanan bought one present.
For herself.

She remembers her family's scorn. "Tiffany," they said, "that's so disrespectful."

She shrugged it off. Whatever.

This Christmas will be different.

The 16-year-old, with reddish-brown bangs that hang in her face, has spent the last 11 months at Omaha's Uta Halee Girls Village, a psychiatric residential treatment program for youths ages 12 to 18.

Uta Halee organizes Cindy's Super Saver, a holiday program that rewards residents for good behavior and teaches them about giving.

It started seven years ago when dietary supervisor Cindy Heaton noticed a boy crying because he had no Christmas presents for his family.

Heaton raided her "Christmas closet" at home, where she stashes bargains that she buys year-round, and gave the boy five presents to give. "He needed something, and I had it," she said.

The boy was so touched she would help him. Maybe there are more kids like him, she thought.

Her good will has evolved into Cindy's Super Saver.

 

(Read more of this cool story Good conduct spreads joy.)

 
 
Meowy Christmas! by fofurasfelinas.
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