Dave Claborn

March, 2004

As I write this, I'm looking at two pictures.  One is of Emily Fitzpatrick.  Perhaps you've had the good fortune to watch her perform or hear her sing.  Emily recently graduated from Harding High School and enrolled in Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.  She is an astounding soprano, who sang with her father Tom at the Harding Memorial during a 9/11 memorial service a couple of years ago.  She was a regular in the Harding Singers and local musical theater.  I heard her most often performing with the Rainbow Classics, the Christian singing group based here in Marion.  Before she went to college, Emily won third runner-up in the Miss Ohio contest.  This past Christmas, her solo performance was broadcast nationally during a "Christmas at Belmont" program on PBS.  And as I write this, I've just received an e-mail informing me that Emily has just captured the "Miss Central Tennessee" crown.  Can Miss America be far behind?

The other picture is of another young lady here in Marion.  I'll call her Kylie.  She's in the fifth grade this year on Marion's west side.  She, too, is a singer.  She knows many of the songs Emily sang with the Rainbow Singers.  In fact, Kylie and Emily met once, at a Rainbow performance.  Kylie told me she thought Emily was beautiful and talented--and she wanted to be just like her as she grew up.  I became acquainted with Kylie and her brother and mother through a tutoring and mentoring program established by Big Brothers/Big Sisters. 

Kylie, like Emily, has ambitions.  She told me she would like to be a lawyer some day.  But her road to that end is littered with obstacles.  Kylie's mother didn't finish high school.  Her father and mother were never married.  Today, her father lives 400 miles away and rarely comes around.  What passes for shelter is a one-story structure with siding peeling off the back, walls of unfinished sheet rock, plumbing that works sporadically, and fewer square feet than the average garage.  Mom has no phone, no car, and often, no job. 

David Shipler wrote recently (January 18^th) in The New York Times magazine about the kind of life Kylie and her family are living.  In an article titled "A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class," Shipler says "Poverty is a peculiar, insidious thing, not just one problem but a constellation of problems: not just inadequate wages but also inadequate education, not just dead-end jobs but also limited abilities, not just insufficient savings but also unwise spending, not just the lack of health insurance but also the lack of healthy households.  The villains are not just exploitative employers but also incapable employees, not just overworked teachers but also defeated and unruly pupils, not just bureaucrats who cheat the poor but also the poor who cheat themselves."

Somehow, amid the chaos that is her life, young Kylie brought home straight A's on her last report card.  I was as astounded by that achievement as I am humbled to hear Emily sing.

Knowing these two young women is to know the nature of this community.  On the one hand are families who, no matter how much or how little money they make, revere education, support their kids and cheer their achievements.  On the other, are kids without much stability in their lives, whose parents may want something better for their children, but for reasons of substance abuse, lack of education or myriad other causes, can't provide it.

Economic development--providing job opportunities--is part of the answer.  But it will take more than that alone to realize the potential in a Kylie or her brother.  It will take one side of the tracks getting to know the other side.  It will take support for schools, mentoring projects, churches partnering with each other, a sharing of ideas and values and wealth.  It will take enlightened leadership and individual commitment to break the cycle of poverty in some parts of this community. 

Someday, soon I suspect, we'll swell wiht pride as Marion Harding's Emily Fitzpatrick sings her way to stardom.  Wouldnt it be remarkable if, not too many years later, we could feel the same pride as young Kylie from the west side accepts her law degree?