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The Because Project asks Vermonters to share their stories about people and experiences that have shaped their lives, especially during their formative years — stories that may inspire others to get involved. Because together, we can all make a difference.

The Vermont Children's Trust Foundation supports statewide prevention programs for children and families to help give all kids a fair chance at success. VCTF believes that "Community creates good kids." Engaged parents, outstanding teachers and involved community members create opportunities for children to learn, to be inspired and to thrive.

VTCF is partnering with Kids VT, Vermont's only parenting magazine. Kids VT will publish one story each month in its magazine and on its website.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The Because Project: Joseph A. Citro

"I've spent the last 30 years writing about Vermont and Vermonters in part because of Ida May Fuller."

BY JOSEPH A. CITRO

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COURTESY OF JOSEPH A. CITRO

Strictly speaking, Aunt Ida wasn't a relative. In my childhood, it was proper for young people to address all older women as "aunt." But she was as close as family. She was the earliest formative influence I can identify and probably the first person I met in this world after my parents brought me home from Rutland Hospital.

"Home" was Aunt Ida's house. I didn't realize until much later that we were her tenants.

Fact is, she was more like a grandmother than a landlady. She was in her seventies when I was born. The door separating our apartments was never closed.

I can remember peeking in to see her sitting in her padded rocking chair by the window, black shoes on a footstool, rectangular magnifying glass poised above her as she read — a newspaper, a letter, a book or the Bible.

She'd look up, smile and invite me to the "Davenport." We'd sit side by side while she read to me. On sunny days, we'd likely sit on the porch — the "piazza," she called it — in matching rockers. There, she taught me the names of the birds, showing me how to describe my surroundings. The birds were everywhere, like flying flowers. I remember telling her that the bluebirds looked like robins, colored wrong.

As easily as she ingrained words and stories into my life, Aunt Ida demonstrated to me what being a true Vermonter was all about.

Ida May Fuller was born in 1874 on a farm right there in Ludlow and went to school with Calvin Coolidge. She was a teacher until 1905, though she was still teaching when I knew her, politely and often humorously correcting me. ("You ought to really know grammar," she joked before giving me the scoop on split infinitives.)

With the money she saved, she went to Boston to study business. Then, from 1905 until she retired in 1939, she worked as a legal secretary for John G. Sargent, who would become attorney general in the Coolidge administration.

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Joe Citro, as a child, with Ida May Fuller

COURTESY OF JOSEPH A. CITRO
Joe Citro, as a child, with Ida May Fuller

She never touched coffee or tea, preferring a cup of hot water with her meals. She never raised her voice nor appeared to be angry or confused about anything. She could quote the Bible but didn't. Instead, she quietly lived and taught the principles of Jesus. "He's as much alive now as he ever was," she once told me.

And she never married. Those who didn't call her Aunt Ida addressed her as Miss Fuller. Everyone knew she was independent; some might have said she was ahead of her time, but she wouldn't have gone along with that.

Aunt Ida achieved some unexpected local notoriety when she was invited to appear on the television show "I've Got a Secret" with Garry Moore. Her secret? She was the first person in America to be issued a Social Security check, number 00-000-001.

She emphatically refused to be on the show, though. It wasn't that she didn't want her secret known, just that the show's sponsor was a tobacco company and smoking was against her principles. Aunt Ida never smoked nor owned a television.

She was 100 years old when she died, in 1975.

While many things led me to become a writer, Aunt Ida was a very potent part of the alchemy. She taught me about the world, a thing or two about women, and the best things about Vermont and Vermonters — principle and independence — all from her sofa, her piazza and her heart.

Joe Citro is a Vermont author known for writing about local and regional folklore, hauntings and paranormal activity. His nonfiction works include "The Vermont Monster Guide" and "Weird New England."

The Because Project asks Vermonters to share their stories about people and experiences that have shaped their lives, especially during their formative years — stories that may inspire others to get involved. Because together we can all make a difference.

The Vermont Children’s Trust Foundation supports statewide prevention programs for children and families to help give all kids a fair chance at success.

Because Project archives »

Tags: Because Project, mentoring, writing

Thursday, February 14, 2013

The Because Project: Mark Redmond

"I decided to work with homeless teenagers because I volunteered at a shelter."

BY MARK REDMOND

I had been a business major in college and my first job after graduation was in an elite training program at an insurance company in New York City. There were only about a dozen of us, and we were slated to become the future presidents and vice presidents of the company. I found an apartment off of Park Avenue. I thought I had it made.

And then one day I talked to a college friend who was working at Covenant House, a nonprofit that sheltered homeless and runaway teens. They were looking for volunteers to help out during the evenings. I told her I'd go over, play basketball and hand out sandwiches one night a week.

Every Tuesday, I'd change out of my business suit, put on jeans, sneakers and a sweatshirt, and take the subway uptown to spend a few hours at Covenant House. After a few weeks, I started to get to know the kids there. Most had grown up in extremely difficult circumstances, surrounded by unemployment, addiction and crime. I met people like Tony, a 19-year-old who had spent his entire childhood being shuttled from one institution to another — his mother had left him and his siblings in Harlem when she moved to North Carolina.

Working with these kids, hearing their stories and seeing them cling to the prospect of a positive future despite everything they had endured made me question my carefully planned career path. Helping a $6 billion-dollar company become a $7 billion-dollar company started to seem much less important.

So I quit my job, left my apartment, and gave my car to my brother and my suits to the Salvation Army. Covenant House had a residence for full-time volunteers who committed to stay for at least one year; I moved in. They assigned me to work on a floor with 40 teenage males who were there because they had nowhere else to live.

My friends thought I was nuts. I'm sure more than a few of my coworkers did, too. But I felt like this was my calling. I didn't really know what I was doing, and they gave me very little training. But I learned as I went along; 32 years later, I'm still learning.

Believe it or not, I'm still in touch with Tony. He was at my wedding, and I was there when his girlfriend gave birth to their daughter — in fact, Tony asked me to be her godfather. My wife and I were able to help her get into one of the city's best charter schools.

I'm very glad I took my friend up on her request to volunteer. That once-a-week commitment turned out to be a lifelong passion.

Mark Redmond is the executive director of Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

Submit your stories for the Because Project! Email them to fagan@vtchildrenstrust.org. Submissions should be 300 to 600 words long and respond to the prompt "I am/decided to/learned to _______ because of ______." Kids VT will feature one of these stories in each issue.

Because Project archives »

Tags: Because Project, volunteering

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

"I started studying music because my grandparents gave me a violin."

BY ANAIS MITCHELL

I grew up close to my maternal grandparents — their house was just down the driveway from ours. They helped raise my brother and me. My granddad was retired, but when I was 7 years old, he was still doing some consulting, so he and my grandma traveled a lot. I remember my excitement when they'd return home from their trips, full of exotic stories and descriptions of new friends. Their suitcases inevitably held a gift for my brother and me. Once, after a trip to Hong Kong, they returned with a tiny, one-eighth-size red violin, perfect for a small pair of arms like mine.

They knew I wanted one. A series of musicians had just visited my elementary school to demonstrate different instruments. One stunningly beautiful, elfin-looking woman played the violin. I had fallen instantly in love with it; when I got home I had announced that I wanted to play, too.

So I started taking lessons, organized and paid for by my grandparents. My granddad would pick me up from school, drive me to my weekly lesson and read the newspaper in the car until I'd finished. I'd practice before school in my grandma's sewing room. She'd bring tea with milk and say things like, "You're sounding great!" and "You're really getting that piece now!"

I dreaded the recitals that were an inevitable part of the lesson cycle. Somehow all the music that was so easy to play in my grandma's sewing room became nearly impossible on stage. My heart pounded, and my hands trembled, giving every note a scratchy, unintended, unprofessional vibrato. It never ceased to amaze me as a kid, riding home from what I thought had been an unmitigated disaster, when my family told me with glowing faces, "You were wonderful!"

I played for several years, then crossed a threshold of adolescence through which the violin could not pass. I was so afraid to disappoint my family, especially my grandparents, by quitting. They'd never been pushy about the instrument, but they had made it clear that if they were going to pay for my lessons, I was going to have to practice. To my great relief, everyone understood the changes I was going through, and they were unsurprised when, a year or two later, I quietly picked up the guitar and began writing songs.

So much about those violin years informed and inspired my life as a songwriter today. There was the ear training and sense of melody that becomes second nature to very young players. There was the practicing — the daily dedication to a craft — which I still find difficult, but it's still true that cups of tea and encouraging words make it easier. There was the knowledge that I could get up on stage even if my hands trembled and that, no matter what, my family loved it.

I travel a lot nowadays, too; It was my grandparents who showed me that we can be at home in the world even when we're far from home and that the world is a friendly, wonderful place, full of people who will take us in.

AnaÏs Mitchell is a musician, singer and songwriter.

"I learned to see past racial differences because a white neighbor taught me to play chess."

BY HAL COLSTON

I was 10 years old during the hot, steamy summer of 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would lead the March on Washington in August, and the racism in my post-Jim Crow town of York, Pennsylvania, was palpable.

My father was an entrepreneur acquiring apartment buildings in our neighborhood. He worked with Hugh Graham, director of the York Redevelopment Authority, which was located just across the street from our home.

Mr. Graham was a stout white man with a shock of white hair and a wide smile. One afternoon I walked across the street to his office. I wanted to see my father, and I was wondering if he and Mr. Graham had finished their meeting. Mr. Graham said that my father had gone to another meeting. I saw a checkered board on a side table in his office with strange pieces on it.

"What's that?" I asked him.

"That's a chess set," he said.

"I've never heard of chess," I told him.

Mr. Graham asked me if I wanted to learn to play. I said I did. Over the next few weeks, he taught me the game.

In chess, white and black pieces battle to the end, but beyond the board, exactly the opposite was happening — a white man was teaching a black person to play.

I was captivated by the game. Later that summer I brought home the Colston family's first chess set.

I paid forward Mr. Graham's gift and taught friends in my neighborhood. I began to play in chess tournaments at the local YMCA. Chess taught me about strategy, perseverance and thinking outside the box. It showed me that by out-maneuvering my opponent, I proved I was every bit as smart. And it demonstrated that it didn't matter whether you chose black or white chess pieces — you could be a winner either way.

I didn't realize it at the time, but Mr. Graham was a pioneer. What an uncommon connection we shared. I am forever grateful to him for taking the time to reach out to me.

Hal Colston is a social entrepreneur who created the Good News Garage in 1996 and NeighborKeepers in 2006. He was appointed by Gov. Peter Shumlin as the executive director of SerVermont in 2011, which administers AmeriCorps state programs and has a mission to promote, support and recognize volunteerism and community service. Colston lives in Winooski and is also an instructor at Champlain College.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Because Project: Grace Potter

"I dedicated myself to music because of my high school choir teacher, Diane Phillips."

This month's essay was written by Grace Potter, lead singer, pianist and guitar player, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.

I came to Harwood Union Middle and High School as a seventh grader, not knowing where I belonged in school. The middle and high school years are a very scary time.

I found my home in the music department. Diane Phillips was my choir teacher. She made me feel like choir wasn't just a class — it was a lifestyle. It was a commitment to my voice, and to quality, to becoming knowledgeable about different genres of music.

Choir might sound boring, but she made it exciting. She always brought unbelievable energy and enthusiasm to every single session we had.

When I was in ninth grade, I was finally able to audition for her exclusive choir. I stayed after school and practiced for three weeks just to get in. She showed me that commitment to something you care about can create the groundwork for the rest of your life.

When I was in tenth grade, I came to her with some music of my own, and asked if she would let me write it into a choral piece and have the entire choir perform it. She said yes.

The sound a choir makes when they're all singing notes you've written is pretty thrilling. It was a very ballsy thing for a teacher to do, to let go of the reins a little bit and allow a student to do that. I think she understood that I was reaching beyond the notes on the sheet music, for something more universal.

And it wasn't just me. She gave other students the same opportunity a couple times after I did it. I thought it was a really commendable thing for an adult to treat her students as peers and but also to be our mentor. She balanced that beautifully.

I had a very special bond with Di and the music department. I saw them go through ups and downs. I saw them struggle through budget cuts, changes in the schedule — just the lack of resources in general.

But Di would always spend extra time with you if you needed it. She didn't just pack up her bags and go home at the end of the day. If you needed her, she was there for you.

On the week of our second CD release, I actually flew home so I could surprise her at her retirement celebration — she taught at Harwood for 39 years. I played piano at a high-school assembly.

The day I was there, it really sunk in. You could see that nothing had changed in the 10 years since I had been at Harwood. All these students knew exactly what I was talking about. They all understood how powerful an influential teacher can be.

When kids are influenced by somebody, whether it's at 5 or 6, or during the formative teenage years, that respect never fades. Everybody understands the emotional connection you have to someone who encouraged you and pushed you to do things you may not have known you were capable of.

I mentioned my trip to Di's retirement celebration to my friend, country music singer Kenny Chesney. Within a week, a white baby grand piano showed up at the school. He sent it because he related to my story; Kenny had an influential music teacher, too.

The Vermont Children's Trust Foundation supports statewide prevention programs for children and families to help give all kids a fair chance at success.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A demanding high school teacher inspired me to become a better writer.

By: Bill McKibben

For an awful lot of people who have figured out interesting paths in life, there seems to have been a teacher somewhere along the way who believed in them. I don’t mean “believed in them” in some sweet and sentimental way—I mean, believed that they were capable of more than they knew. For me, it was a high school history teacher named Ray Karras.

He was nobody’s stereotype of the ‘favorite teacher,’ easy on the grades and eager to banter with his young charges. (That was the social studies teacher down the hall, in bellbottoms and moustache, who later went to jail for selling drugs.) No, Mr. Karras treated us as if we were, or should be, young academics. He demanded papers that presented well-laid out arguments (long papers!). If you asked him to write a college recommendation, he would—but only in a sealed envelope sent straight to the college, and it was well-known that sometimes he told them to reject the applicant.

So: a compliment counted. I remember him telling me one day, “You’re a good writer.” I was used to adults telling me this, but only because I was glib, and knew a lot of words, and hence was able to get away with a good deal. When Mr. Karras said it, I actually believed it. Doubtless he gave me a B, but doubtless it was worth a good deal more than all the top grades I ever got.

- Bill McKibben is an Author, Educator and Environmentalist. He is the President and Co-Founder of 350.org

Friday, August 3, 2012

I was inspired to pursue public service because of an internship in Senator Leahy's office.

BY MIRO WEINBERGER @MIROBTV

I took a year off between my sophomore and junior years of college, and that fall, I traveled to Washington, D.C., to join a protest against the first Gulf War.

I was young and it was my first time in Washington. I found the city — its buildings and monuments dedicated to democracy, justice and the law — an inspiring place to be. I had no opportunities lined up, but I basically kept going back to Sen. Leahy's office, knocking on the door to see if someone would give me an internship. After about a week of persistence, I was able to talk to the right person.

They wouldn't have taken me on during the summer — that's when most people intern in those offices, and positions are filled far in advance. But because it was the off season, they were able to find a role for me. I worked in the office for eight months.

The work was low level, like sorting mail and compiling research for the senator's staff. But the office was an exciting, energetic, collaborative place. A lot of offices on Capitol Hill have a great deal of turnover. People come in, they get burnt out, they move on. But Sen. Leahy has long been known for having one of the most stable and loyal staffs in Washington. People really believed in what they were doing, and they stuck around.

Like Luke Albee, for example. Luke was the legislative director, and later became Sen. Leahy's chief of staff. It was a big office — there were probably around 30 people — and it would have been easy for an intern like me to get completely lost in the shuffle. Luke was one of the top people in the office, but he paid attention to the research I did. He gave me advice throughout that time, and has continued to do so in the years since. And not just about politics — he eventually introduced me to a colleague who then introduced me to my wife!

But what affected me most was witnessing the senator and his staff working with people from all kinds of backgrounds and political orientations to try and push the country forward. I was moved to see that government was in large part about that kind of collaboration. So much of what we read and see about politics is about polarized, combative rhetoric. But a lot of what actually needs to get done requires working together.

Now, as mayor of Burlington, I find that to be especially true on the local level.

If I hadn't walked into Sen. Leahy's office requesting an internship, there's a very good chance I would never have gone down this path, or known how to pursue a public-service career. Pretty much my whole political experience flowed from that internship. It shaped how I approach my work and engage with people every day.