Staff and students at Palmer Trinity step up to help less fortunate during pandemic

Thank you to everyone who has written to me about how they are helping others, what they are grateful for, and the good news all around us as we navigate new paths in this time of the coronavirus and COVID-19. I will do my best to include as many stories as I can.

This story came in from Palmer Trinity School, where although the campus remains closed, students and members of the faculty and administration have found new ways to practice the school’s guiding principles.

“While at home, I reflected upon our purpose at this time — to serve. The question was how,” said Susi Cetta, Director of Student Activities and Service Living.

“One thing that we are really good at, via our Service Living Program, is providing tutoring services both on and off-campus at several local nonprofits. I put out a call for virtual tutors and in less than an hour heard from over 20 Upper School PTS students!

“I then reached out to three organizations, two shelters and one community-based program from which we can take referrals. Our students are amazing and truly show up when called upon.”

One of those students is Ainsley Franklin, a PTS junior, who is leading the volunteer tutoring efforts. Ainsley sent out Google forms to her classmates interested in tutoring “to determine the subjects they were capable of tutoring in and organized training while they await referrals.”

The school also has a long-standing relationship with Branches, a local nonprofit, which contacted PTS about 500 children and families in Florida City who are in dire need of support and food.

Many of the families have limited resources and live in modest and crowded apartments and homes near the Branches Community Center. COVID-19 panic buying left grocery store shelves bare.

Palmer Trinity stepped in with fresh produce harvested from the school’s gardens that was planted and tended to by its sixth- and seventh-grade middle school science classes. The school also donated food from the school’s cafeteria supply.

The result was a van full of frozen meat, eggs, spaghetti sauce, snack foods, fruits, vegetables and other needed supplies. The school also launched a food drive through which people in the community can safely drop off nonperishable food items to Branches.

“In a small way we were able to help Branches at this critical time. We will also continue to answer the call to serve in the habit of heart and mind,” said Patrick Roberts, head of the school.

Celebrating a 100th birthday

We can’t forget to celebrate, especially birthdays, and always the really big ones. Angela Truitt wrote to say her mother, Esther Clark, celebrated her 100th birthday March 6.

Esther Winnifred Roe was born at home in 1920, delivered by her grandfather who was a physician in Richmond Hill, Long Island, New York. She studied Liberal Arts at Louisiana State Normal School, as it was known then. It is now Northwestern State University.

After one year, in 1942, she moved back to New York, married and started working for Lockheed Air Force Base in Buffalo on the Aero Cobra (Airacobra) as inspector of the interior gas tanks. Her daughter said Esther didn’t realize at the time that she was part of an important measure that helped our country to move forward.

After a move to Texas, with a baby girl, she did the same work for the War Production Coordinating Committee.

“She can still describe the wing on these aircraft,” Truitt said.

After the death of her first husband, a move to Miami in the 1950s, a new marriage, and raising three more children, Esther went to work for the Dade County School System, as it was then known.

“She retired at age 76 after enjoying 23 years working in the library and has wonderful memories of the kids. One being when a student planted marijuana seeds in her small planter, and she thought it a beautiful plant that had suddenly flourished!

“She is a funny lady and still is,” Truitt said of her mom. “She’s a positive thinker and has the strength and humor that keeps her enjoying life. She loves to be around all the fun and activities no matter what it may be. Loves reading and reporting, with a laugh about her Enquirer stories! We still color her hair because she’s ‘an Auburn, darn it, and always will be.’ ”

“I became aware of her social grace, her proper gestures that were so becoming of her generation, and I am so grateful for the exposure to this ‘greatest generation’ style of class,” Truitt said.

She described how her mom survived the loss of her first husband, a divorce from the second, single parenting, and “low income times where we didn’t have a car or a washing machine.”

“She never appeared defeated. She just took us through each day, keeping good shows like ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’ on Sunday nights and ‘Bonanza.’ She kept us happy.”

National Water Dance

At 4 p.m. on April 18, you can virtually celebrate our nation’s waterways at a reimagined 2020 National Water Dance. Each dancer will create their own personal dance and will post their solos to Instagram and Facebook, as well as share via specific hashtags.

Founder/creator of NWD Projects Dale Andree was planning to bring together more than 100 dance ensembles from across the country, including Puerto Rico, to dance simultaneously outdoors along any water site — a river, a bay, a lake, the ocean — and for the first time at the National Mall Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C.

Social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic changed all that.

“My desire for creating National Water Dance was to inspire dancers of all ages to connect with the environment and use the physical energy of dance to bring awareness to water, and the issues around it,” Andree said.

Everyone is invited to join in even if the water near you is a bathtub, a sink, a swimming pool, or even a glass of water.

“National Water Dance has taken on an additional meaning this year because of our forced isolation,” Andree said. “Our digital world houses our collective spirit and more than ever we feel the need to offer that space for dancers to move together and feel that their physical expression still has a voice in the cacophony of voices struggling to be heard.”

Visit https://www.nwdprojects.org/2020-nwd-event/ to learn more.

Help hurt wildlife

Pelican Harbor Seabird Station wants everyone to know that it is still open daily to receive and treat sick, injured and orphaned native birds and other animals. Daily operations have been modified to protect staff members so there is limited human contact.

If you see a wild animal that needs help, call in advance at 305-751-9840. You can bring it to the station at 1279 NE 79th St. Cswy., Miami, leave it in a drop-off carrier on the side of the building, and complete the intake form. This is incredibly helpful for the rehabilitation staff.

All educational programming and the volunteer program are suspended during the coronavirus pandemic. The Sunset Cruises and the Speaker Series are postponed until further notice.

Learn more at www.pelicanharbor.org where you can download and print children’s coloring book activity pages.

Also be sure to check the group’s Facebook page @pelicanharborat at 5:30 p.m., where every Wednesday you can watch a wild bird, if one is ready, be released after rehabilitation.

If you have news for this column, write to ChristinaMMayo@gmail.com.