It’s November, an election month, and I wish the members of the Northlake Math Club were running for something.
The Senate. The House of Representatives. Texas Legislature. District Judge.
Whatever.
Because even though I’ve never met any of these men, they are my idea of what public servants should be: They are serving the public, and they don’t care whether anyone knows about it or not.
Our cover story this month about the Northlake Math Club came about after Editor Becky Bull met one of the members through the Exchange Club of Lake Highlands.
These guys weren’t politicking for a story about themselves. They just wanted another volunteer for their growing tutoring program.
Bull attended a few of the tutoring sessions and came back with glowing stories about neighborhood homeowners making a positive difference with children who live in apartments and needed a hand.
The tutors are professionals – lawyers, financial consultants, etc. I’m sure they’re like the rest of us and have plenty of things they could be doing instead of showing up at an elementary school at 7:15 a.m. and tutoring a bunch of kids they don’t know.
But there they are, without fanfare, doing something good for someone else for no reason other than that tutoring these children is the right thing to do.
“I would like to change the universe,” says Steve Swayze, a Math Club volunteer, “but you have to start with those closest to you.”
I think that’s the big difference between these guys and most of the rest of us.
It’s pretty easy to agree that tutoring kids who need help is the right thing to do. We’re just not going to make the time to do it. Period.
We all know what happens to kids whose parent(s) are simply too busy working multiple jobs to pay the rent – they simply don’t always have time to make sure their kids are completing their studies.
So the kids begin to feel alone, left out, ostracized.
Then, some of them start out picking fights with other kids. Then, some of them join gangs. They commit crimes. They wind up in jail, maybe prison. Then they get back out on the streets and start all over again.
We know this is the pattern. We know what it takes to change the course of these children’s lives. Most of us just, plain and simple, aren’t going to lift a finger to do anything about it.
Oh, we’ll talk about what needs to be done. We’ll complain that nothing is getting done. We just won’t do anything ourselves to make a difference.
That’s what’s so great about elections. The candidates promise to “do something” about crime. They promise to “do something” about declining education-test scores. They promise to “do something” about too much welfare reaching too many people.
But you know, most of these candidates are like the rest of us: All talk and no action.
Not the members of the Math Club.
“These kids are smart,” volunteer Kevin Fagan says. “They can grasp a lot of subjects if we can feed them into them. These young people are our future.”
“Somebody needs to work with them. Since I can make the time, I come and do it.”
To me, that is as eloquent a campaign statement as any I’ve ever heard.
So here’s my recommendation this month: If we can find a candidate who isn’t just paying lip service to community involvement, who actually has been out there making a difference (and there are a few candidates who can honestly make this claim), this candidate – regardless of party affiliation – deserves our vote.
And if we can’t find someone with these qualifications, maybe it’s time to start a write-in candidacy for some of the Math Club members.
They may not really want to be politicians. But that’s exactly the kind of people we need most.
Works of Artists
This is a good month to make sure you know about the people who make the Advocate look good.
Our freelance photography staff of Robert Bunch, Linda Lux and Donna Robinson work very hard to produce the photos you enjoy every month.
Good photography can tell a story just as effectively as a well-researched and well-written story.
If you see Robert, Linda or Donna around the neighborhood, let them know you enjoy their work.
