Sap Season
In which we learn a little about the other kind of sap.
It’s sap season in the Northeast, and believe me, here at Talk of the Townie, I fit right in.
I’ve been arguing with myself, weighing the pros and cons of shining a light on my sap story. I worry, though, is it too, well, sappy, I wonder? But last Friday night, I outed myself, because there I was, in the EAHS auditorium, sap, or tears, you could call them, leaking from my eyes. I was sitting by myself, but I’m sure everyone could tell I was anything but an objective, “Just the facts, ma’am,” newspaper reporter.
A student I have gotten to know over the last few years, senior Sadie Freier, and her sidekick, junior Michael Kloc, proudly took the stage at the first (perhaps annual) Unified Club Talent Show and knocked the national anthem out of the park. Sadie, resplendent in a scarlet gown, without prompting or without a song sheet, belted out the tune, reaching its high notes and lows with ease while Michael, in a blue tunic, gave his interpretation of the song through expressive hand and body movements. They were wonderful. I’m not sure if anyone else was crying; I couldn’t focus through my own tears.
Sadie, you see, was born with Williams Syndrome, a genetic condition characterized by developmental delays and learning challenges. Those challenges, however, are often accompanied by effervescent personalities and verbal energy. That’s Sadie. She just returned from Washington, where she lobbied elected officials on behalf of Special Olympics, the organization that oversees Unified Sports at the youth level. Michael doesn’t speak too much, but he is a jovial fellow, as expressive without words as anyone.
Michael and Sadie have been stalwart members of the Unified Club, an all-inclusive club at the high school, which now has chapters at the middle school and Parkdale Elementary. In fact, the funds raised at the talent show will help build the inclusive and adaptive playground at Parkdale.
The Unified Club, under the leadership of EA alumna, now English teacher, Tara O’Connor Arnold ’08, began in 2022 by welcoming students with and without intellectual disabilities to a variety of activities at the high school. I first covered the club at a Unified basketball game, where three athletes, students with intellectual disabilities , and two partners, students without intellectual disabilities take the floor at a time. I had never witnessed such a display of sportsmanship. Basketball became simply a vehicle to express kindness and inclusion. At one point in the first game, an opposing athlete shot and missed. The Blue Devil player who rebounded the ball, rather than taking off for his end of the court, handed the ball to the opponent, cleared a path for her and let her shoot again. She made the second shot, both benches and the crowd erupted in cheers. High fives for everyone. And I wept, just a little. But I wept for her, for the East Aurora and opposing players, for all of us.
I wasn’t alone. In the stands that day was girls varsity coach, Gary Schutrum, who dabbed a bit at his eyes. Later in the season, I saw the boys coach, Chris Koselny. Witnessing a similar act of sportsmanship, he said, “This is what high school athletics is all about.”
I still get a little weepy, in my fifth year of giving the Unified Club as much ink as possible in the World’s Best Hometown Newspaper, the East Aurora Advertiser, when I cover one of their events—basketball, bowling, field trips, Inclusion Week at the high school, the Coffee Cart, the sticker store.
I shudder to think of my school days—the 1950s and ‘60s. Kids with any disabilities, any kind of differences were segregated from us “normal” kids, made to understand that they didn’t belong. Out of sight, out of mind, in some faraway room at the end of the hall or in the basement, categorized by the schools with labels I won’t utter now. And called names, I fear, by us little pisspots. God, I hope not too often. The cruelty, born of ignorance or arrogance or both, haunts me.
I get emotional, too, because Unified sports and club activities and the good people who run them* rise so far above the rhetoric of the day. The bombardment of ill will, of nastiness, of cruelty, of arrogance, of me-first, of narcisism we receive all day-every day from social and not-so-social media can harden one’s soul if we let it. The man who sits in the highest chair in the land—or highchair, if you prefer—leads this parade of bigotry, boorishness, indecency, one-dog-one-bone, bullying, disregard for democracy, disregard for anyone but himself. He embodies everything my parents and yours, no doubt, hoped we would never resort to just to get our way or make an extra buck. Several presidents of the fourteen who have reigned in my lifetime have not inspired my affection, but none have been bad men—flawed, indeed, but not George Thorogood “Bad to the Bone”—until this one.
Maybe my nausea took root when he first mocked the reporter with a physical disability at a press conference, maybe it reached its zenith on January 6 or when the Epstein and misogynistic revelations surfaced; it certainly boiled over with the recent remarks about dyslexia. As a lifelong friend of and former faculty member at the Gow School, the renowned school for students with dyslexia who go on to great and varied success, I understand the poverty of the man’s intellect and ethical and moral makeup. And to those who somehow justify his continuing dominance over American politics—I am at a loss. Really, it’s not about politics; it’s about decency.
So, when I watch two of the most popular, busiest members of the senior class, Unified Club partners Cam Jacubek and Jackson Suckow, emcee the talent show with obvious joy, I am buoyed. When I watch Sadie and Michael on stage with the panache and confidence of seasoned performers, when I watch the dancers, singers, actors put on a show attended by so many of their classmates, I get a little emotional, a little sappy.
Because the good stuff, the stuff that remains when you distill the sap into its essence of human decency, carries on and is transcendent.
They give us hope!
Beautiful, Rick. Simply beautiful.