Lee Young, former writer for The Helena Daily World, keeps tabs on this neck of the woods and from time to time offers some interesting news via email. The last batch of tips included an article published in the Khaleej Times. That paper is the first English newspaper to be launched in the United Arab Emirates and is printed in the province of Dubai.
After reading the article, I remembered the people in it and lived the heartbreak as if I was there, holding hands between the two who experienced so much together.
Some readers may remember Michelle Kuo, a Teach For America teacher who spent a few years in Helena. Her voice (article) from the Middle East sent chills down my spine because I have heard similar stories from so many that try and make a difference here.
Her article touched me in many ways and was entitled “The Lost Student.”
She wrote a piece about what happened to one of her former students from here. When she was teaching here, a student, Patrick to be exact, was struggling through the eighth grade and had already repeated that grade level twice. She wrote about trying to reach the youngster who seemed sad and distant, who lived across the street from a burned house and how it seemed that nobody cared for him.
Although the student had a difficult time, he was able to progress with Michelle’s help. After she left the Arkansas Delta, she went to law school and was crushed when she learned that her former pupil was arrested for stabbing someone to death.
She wrote about flying from the Northeastern part of the U.S. to visit him in the Phillips County Jail and how ashamed he was when he saw her from the other side of the iron bars. She talked about how much he had changed after just a few years.
In the article she expressed the same feelings many have in Phillips County and how they somehow feel that if they had stayed, they could have prevented such tragedies from happening.
“I haven’t been able to resist guilty feelings over Patrick. What if I’d stayed? And I’ve wondered if my sense of Patrick was faulty; whether I saw only the parts I wanted to see. But isn’t any teacher who tries to bring out the best in her students inclined to see them in the warmest light?” she wrote. I almost fell to tears over what heartbreak both she and Patrick’s family must suffer.
As the young man sits in jail waiting for a trial to determine his innocence or guilt, I can’t help but wonder how many sad stories like this one have gone unnoticed?
There are many, many dedicated people willing to give their time to our community and I imagine that there must be so many times they feel they have let down the very people they are trying to help. Despair seems to flow evenly and run deep in Phillips County, especially when young people kill or severely injure one another.
The latest incidents of murder and mayhem are enough to depress you. There has to be another way to reach these hooligans who turn to violence as an answer.
Perhaps Pastor Michael Jenkins’ casket march will shake some sense into the youths.
Maybe we are too late and good, quality people who want to make a difference like Michelle will pass Phillips County by.
I hope not.
As feeble as it is, I can only offer my own hope as a gift to this community. I hope the crime stops, I hope the murder stops and I hope people like Michele Kuo will keep coming to Phillips County to instill their own brand of hope into the lost young people of this area.
