Beauty Is...

Our lives continuously intertwine among other lives to make a woven tapestry and I am just one of those threads.  My yarn touches upon so many other yarns all the way through my life.  The more you and I interact with neighbors, the more we become interlocked in other people’s lives in the community.

I met Aaron Schaible when he was on my daughters T-Ball team and only occasionally saw him from then on.  He is now 14 years old. Our paths crossed again last fall when Aaron submitted a video for the PTSA Reflections Program.  In the Reflections program, children submit artwork to compete in specific categories at their local level across the United States. The winning entries advance to the council, district, region, and/or state PTA levels, depending on the state structure. Top state award–winning entries advance to the national level of judging.

As an Art Judge for our local Reflections program, I’ve seen sophisticated art that reaches the level of professional standards.  If you’re competing against that quality of work at such an early stage, it’s a long ride to the top!  This school year over 500,000 students participated nationally in the required art categories.  At the national competition, 6 works from each art category were awarded Outstanding Interpretation, 72 received Awards of Excellence and 120 Awards of Merit.  That’s out of 500,000 students! 

Aaron chose to submit a video for the Film Production Art category and the topic for this fall’s Reflection Program was “Beauty is….”  With such a broad-spectrum of ideas to choose from, Aaron said he “thought hard about what true beauty is, the thing I thought about was the inner beauty that Danny possesses and shows every day in so many ways.” Aaron submitted ‘Beauty is What’s inside: A portrait of My Friend Danny’.

Aaron added “I’ve known Danny my whole life. I can’t remember ever not knowing him.  My Mom knew him long before I was born.  What has always affected and surprised me most about Danny is the fact that someone who is so limited could be such an amazing human being, and could teach everyone without a disability the valuable lesson of consistent positivity.”

I asked Danny about how his disability (Spastic Quadriplegic with Multiple Disabilities) affected his day to day life.  He described an experience he had recently “I was just at the ball park- tons of kids kept walking in front of my wheelchair and I couldn’t move or get anywhere.  I go out and people won’t give me attention and ignore me.  I literally have to get a friend or a worker from the ball park to ask people to make room for me.  The non-disabled people give no respect, especially kids.”

Did he see himself as a role model since he is self-confident and gets to places on his own?  He thought for a moment, “I can see myself as a role model with my disabled friends.  A lot of my friends have gone out and gotten shoved around. I am very self-confident.  Some of the non-disabled people from church and Jocelyn are nice and give me respect.”

Aaron’s film has already touched many people’s lives, most importantly Danny’s. 

Jocelyn, Aaron’s mom told about a recent occurrence.  “Recently Danny’s wheelchair stopped working, and was badly in need of repairs he could not afford to make. For Danny, being without his wheelchair has meant being bedridden and imprisoned in his depressing little room at the North Blossom old age home. 

So Danny’s church took up the cause, and held a pancake breakfast to raise money, and created a website called www.FriendsofDan.org.  Grab a tissue and visit the site -- go to the “About Dan” tab.  When you talk about the video having a life of its own, this is just one more example: The morning of the pancake breakfast, Danny was hospitalized at Rochester General with a kidney stone and bladder infection, so he had to miss his own fund-raising breakfast. So Aaron’s movie became Dan’s stand-in for the event, and people were so moved by it that many donated by participating generously in the silent auction even though they’d never even met him in person.” 

“In addition, Aaron’s film has been used as a training tool in a National Continuing Education E-Journal to train healthcare providers about sensitivity to patients with special needs, and has been used by a college professor to train future special education teachers.”

Aaron received an Award of Excellence in the National Film Production Art category for the Middle/Junior age division.

As a National Award of Excellence winner, Aaron received $200 cash award, a silver-plated Reflections medallion, a PTA certificate and recognition in the annual PTA Reflections online gallery.