Mary Beth Beal is wearing a smile that just won’t quit. The reason? Her daughter Kate Beal, who was featured in a magazine article in “Connections” a magazine/newsletter for the Cambridge Friends school Community, in Cambridge, Massachussetts. Young Miss Beal encouraged her first grade students to be sensitive to the needs and rights of differently disabled. She credits her interest in this area to her father, Isaac Beal who started a Special Services for the Chicago Transit Authority which he operated with his wife, Mary Beth. Young Ms. Beal graduated from St. Bernardine’s, St. Ignatius, and Tufts University. She’s now teaching at Cambridge Friends School where children learn to look beyond their own perspective and eventually become citizens of the world. The article describes how students tried to think of how children with needs different from their own might need special playground equipment, i.e. motor powered see-saw, lights, for deaf children etc . Gradually they became aware of the fact that disabled people are just like us. As one child put it “They’re still a person. They just maybe can’t hear or see so good and they need help to do things we maybe could do on our own.”
The class took field trips to various establishments around Cambridge including a local grocery store. They made notes on clipboards and presented them to the store management. The children pointed out that some aisle directories were too small to be read by people with low vision and too high for some people using wheelchairs. The management was a bit taken aback by the children’s candor and knowledge, but they did lower their aisle directories and lowered the height of the aisle directory. Kate described the feeling a teacher gets when she realizes by looking at the faces of her students, that what she has been teaching has become internalized in her class. No amount of money can buy that!
Calling all graduates of 50 years ago – 1964. Oak Park, Forest Park and River Forest are all included. The parties will travel from Kevil’s to Goldie’s and back. The date is October 11. Set your watches. That includes graduates of grade schools high schools and college of the year 1964. Don’t worry if you’re fatter, older, gray, whatever, just know your old classmates will be ecstatically happy to see you again.
Jimmy Cavanaugh’s family picture finally made it to the Review. Here they are: Janet Classen, (Jimmy’s daughter), his grandchildren Katie and Tommy and son-in-law Tom Classen. All from Fr. Lauderdale, Florida, up her to see Grandpa Jimmy.
Happy birthday this week to President Barack Obama, Karen Stuart, Kelly Rice Molnar, Debbie Espinoza, Kelly Crawford, Ethel Draper, Ed Martinski, Kathleen Lane, Marie Gianelli, Madeline Kochman, Evelyn Rose Osborn, Ashley Ernst, Sandy Boy, Brianna Balsavich, Anthony Gaines. Happy anniversary to Janet and Gary Fink.
Congratulations to Dorothy and Angelo Spinelli who will have their street named in their honor!
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Jackie is a former Chicago and Elmwood Park schoolteacher with an undying love for music, friendly pets and a host of life’s other treasures too numerous to list. She was born on the far southwest side of Chicago in a great neighborhood when it was a great time to be young.
