The occasion was the group’s seventh annual meeting, held at Mallalieu-Jones United Methodist Church in Mount Airy, and the focus of this year’s gathering was on children and youth in the African-American community.
While many in our community were recalling fondly the days of decades past, as shown through their televisions from the fictional town of Mayberry, Saturday’s gathering of the society was focused on the more recent past, as seen through the eyes of local children.
Much of the day’s events were centered around an essay contest, and youth from age 9 up to 18 were invited to submitted essays, and then be at Saturday’s meeting to read their work to those in attendance. The essays revolved around family trips taken recently, or on the essay writers’ role models and how those people have affected the writers.
I don’t know who came up with this idea, but I think it was a wonderful way to get kids excited about writing, about sharpening their public speaking skills, and about taking notice of their surroundings and their histories and recording that history.
Nine area young people turned in essays, but because of illness and other activities not all were able to be on hand to present their work. Still, it was nice to see those who could be there read their essays, and afterward I had a chance to chat with them.
All of them seemed excited to have done the work, and to have had the chance to present their stories Saturday. A couple of them — 14-year-old Jaleen Te’Von Hatcher and 12-year-old Elizabeth Hatcher — said it wasn’t even their first time doing this sort of work because their teachers at Mount Airy Middle School require them to complete similar assignments.
I may be a little biased, simply because I’ve spent much of my life in the writing and publishing field, but I think these folks — the leaders of the Society and the local teachers — are on to something that is vitally important.
Writing and story telling.
Those who can do this, who take the time to learn the craft of writing, the skill of watching and listening and then turning those observations into stories, are people who often find great fulfillment in life. These are skills that can be used for career growth and in personal pursuits.
And Saturday’s essays were even more important because the young people sharing them were relating events from their own lives, telling us a little bit about not only themselves but about those they were writing about.
In this instance the Society is working to spur not only an interest in writing and public speaking, but in getting the youth of our area to take a more attentive interest in their own past.
We all have different backgrounds. How we were raised comes, in many ways, from how our parents were raised, and in turn how their parents were raised. I’ve seen it in my own family, my own kids developing, at least in part, based upon my understanding of the world. Much of my world view was formed during my own childhood and teen years, when my parents held sway over what I saw and heard, and it was the same for my mother and father as they grew up.
The older I get, the more I believe that family traits from two, three, even four or more generations ago still affect me and my family today.
It is, no doubt, the same with these young people who turned in their essays and presented them Saturday.
As we all — no matter our race or ethnic backgrounds — get in touch with and better understand our roots, and those of others, I think we set ourselves up for a brighter future.
I hope to see the Society do more of this sort of thing for area young people, as I would like to see various groups in the community do, and then perhaps share their stories with one another. I think this could go a long way toward giving us all a better understanding of those who share this community with us.
John Peters is the editor of The Mount Airy News. He can be reached at 719-1931 or at jpeters@mtairynews.com.
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