Over the past three years I have been fortunate enough to watch some incredible people do some incredible things at Enloe. But what kids at Enloe do is tangible. Everyone takes AP classes, everyone is involved in clubs, CB raises x amount of money year after year. How they do it is more or less explainable too. If you study hard enough and work long enough hours you can get those A’s and secure those donations. So why do we do what we do? Why is it not just normal, but expected, that excellence be the status quo?
While volunteering at Urban Ministries, myself and a few other council members participated in an abstract writing activity with the women at the Helen wright center. Led by our advisor Nate Barilich (English teacher by day), we made inkblots and used them as inspiration for a piece of writing, whether that be a poem or short story. With the only restrictions being the bounds of our creativity, we talked and wrote while the women told us stories of their first prom and how their kids were just like us when they were our age.
As the activity came to a close, Mr. Barilich asked for volunteers to read their stories aloud, and slowly but surely, people shared. As story after story was told, I was taken back by the authenticity and passion of their pieces. They wrote of their hopes, their dreams, and what it was like when the only thing they had left was hope. About halfway through sharing, one woman began to read her poem “Freedom Fliers” but choked up as she read “This description represents to me the pains I desire to be free”, finishing only after a woman sitting next to her whispered a few choice words of encouragement. As we continued sharing I found myself looking to Mr. Barilich and the other student council members in awe. As we walked out of the center later that night I looked to the building, then suspiciously back to Mr. Barilich, curious if he had even the slightest indication that the night would go the way it did. I never asked. Everyone has a story to tell, and the women inside the center were no different.
The story of Charity Ball is humbling and the work we do amazes me everyday. The people we help are real, with equally real aspirations. Sixty kids normally couldn’t raise 120k in two months, but a poem based on an Ink Blotch normally couldn’t inspire a room full of people. I’m not entirely sure why a group of high schoolers ever got out of bed one morning and convinced themselves that 120K for something they believed in was attainable. But like any great story, understanding Charity Ball requires a suspension of disbelief, and after seeing what the students at Enloe can do, there is no one else I’d rather believe in.
Jake Gordon
Clubs and Organizations Officer