Mrs Allyson Daly,
Wayne High School
USA
Although
stories are important because they teach us about culture, although they teach
us what it means to be human, and although they pass down history from
generation to generation, this is not why we love them. We love them because they hook us, and
because they hook us and make us feel more alive they are powerful.
Wayne High School
USA
Quote:
“You
are the hero of your own story.”
~Joseph Campbell
I love
stories! I have always loved them, most
especially because I had the most wonderful storyteller in my family. As a little girl, my dad would tell us
stories that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The hero in his stories was often running
through the jungle, getting chased by someone who wanted to hurt him, and as he
was running he was hit the face and body by plants and bugs. My dad would make slapping sounds against his
chest to make the story come alive and my brothers and cousins and I would be
spellbound. To be spellbound means that
what he was doing seemed like magic to us; we couldn’t look away. I thought at the time that he was creating
these stories from his imagination.
I
did not know it when I was eight, but my dad was a reconnaissance navigator for
the F-4, fighter airplane in the Vietnam War.
Reconnaissance missions were those where the guns were taken off the
airplane and in their place cameras were put to take pictures of activities on
the ground. While he was trying to take
pictures over Laos in his airplane, he was shot down by a North Vietnamese
pilot, who was flying a MIG, a Russian made fighter airplane. As his airplane was breaking apart, exploding
and twisting, he and the pilot were separated over a deep valley. His parachute caught at the top of the
jungle, about 130 feet above the ground.
As he was dangling in the tree, his plane was burning beneath him. His seat had fallen all the way down and
breaking branches in a column, creating a chimney effect. The smoke, birds, and bugs all tried to escape
through the path his seat had created and were hitting and choking him as they
escaped. After he got to the ground, he
was chased through the jungle and had to hide not to be caught. As the enemy soldiers fired their rifles into
the jungle, the buckshot sprayed out and he could hear it patter on the leaves
around him. That is how close he was to
being caught! He was rescued by a helicopter pilot at the
same moment that an enemy soldier found him and watched him jump to
safety. Now I know that the stories he
told us when we were little were his way of sharing the scariest experience of
his life, in a way that was safe, because until recently, he never talked about
what happened to him in Vietnam.
I am sharing this with you because what has
happened to him in the last three years has been the most amazing story that I
have ever witnessed. Thirty-seven years after my father’s rescue, he got a call that the
Vietnamese pilot who shot him down wanted to meet him. At first my dad was not sure that he wanted
to do that. He hadn’t wanted to think
about it at all, and now he would have to talk to the person who almost took
his life. The pilot’s name is Hong My
and this is what it looked like when they met:
Photo:
Whether
our stories are true or the fiction that leads us to the truth, we know that
when we face our fears, we open ourselves up to new possibilities. In these three stories from Eastern Wayne
High School students, two of the stories are set in the time of kings and queens,
but can you see each student’s real concerns within them? In Tomeeka’s story, a young man feels that
his parents are too strict and he wants to be free, so he breaks their
rules. His parents jump to the wrong
conclusion to soon. In Mary’s story, a
simple man cannot think of a story to please his ruler, a queen who will kill
him if he does not have a good one.
Doesn’t this sound like a student who is worried about thinking of a
good story for a good grade? (The
character of the queen was greatly exaggerated; I do not scare my students into
being good writers, but I did laugh at her device.) The third student, by Chinese student Minyi
He, shows a young girl who has moved from one school to another and how she
must open herself up to new people and experiences to feel the “warmth from
real friendship.”
We
offer a special thank you to Mamta, Julia, and Anna; by creating this volume
you have made a space where we are all speakers and listeners, storytellers and members of the audience. Only epic heroes take on the impossible task
(managing ten international teachers, their students, all 12-17 years old, and
finishing the end of the year chaos) to bring back a boon, or gift to the
community (civilized, educated children).
Take a bow, epic heroes. Individually, we created our own stories, but together
we are also a part of a collective, larger story, one that moves us from
viewing people as other than ourselves to participating in shaping our future. We are writing a new story, one of discovery
and mutual respect. The gift you have
given us by connecting us together is a powerful story that gives me hope.
