Mrs. Childs and the Center of the Universe

     When my dad died just a little over 19 years ago, and when my mom passed 7 years later, Eloise Childs was the first person to knock at my door.

     “I had to come check on my Will,” she said with a card, check and a strong, deep-hearted hug.

     Mrs. Childs always called me "Will." I loved it.

     Today, it was my turn to do the checking on her family. Mrs. Childs’ funeral was today, and I’ve teared up more than a few times thinking about her and her legacy. I’m certainly not the only person who has benefited from the selfless heart that beat inside her chest, but she sure made me feel like I was.

     That was her gift. Mrs. Childs made every person in her life feel like he or she was the center of the universe.

     I met Mrs. Childs when my family moved to Cave Spring Road. I was getting ready to enter the second grade. We were poor as dirt. We lived at the top of dusty hill that looked over the squalor of a place called Clemonesville. We were surrounded by drunks, rebels and fighters whose necks really were sunburned red, along with their farmer-tanned arms. Eloise and Johnny Childs made me feel safe and welcome. They weren’t like most of the other people around us. Mrs. Childs went to church. She volunteered at the school. Mr. Johnny had hunting dogs. I had never known anybody who had hunting dogs before.

     Over the years, Mrs. Childs became a second mama to me. She invited me inside her white clapboard house with red shutters for a cold drink or a sandwich. Her shutters had a "C" monogram on them. That made me think Mrs. Childs was rich and fancy. She wasn't, though. She let me play in her yard. She drove me to school. She hugged me and encouraged me. If I had met her in the 90s, she would have been called a mentor, but back in the 70s, she was just a nice lady.

     That’s probably why her name didn’t rise to the top when I nominated her for the Heart of the Community Award a few years back. She didn't go to ribbon cuttings or get her picture in the paper for her volunteer work. She didn’t sit on any boards that I’m aware of, and I’m pretty sure she never joined a country club. She touched lives one at a time, and, really, isn’t that where the most meaningful work happens? She taught Sunday School and Vacation Bible School for decades. She was president of the Mother’s Club and PTA at McHenry Elementary School. She was a paraprofessional and lunchroom volunteer at Pepperell Elementary School. And, she loved.

     She never got an award for that, but there’s a very long line of men and women she mentored, ranging from 20 to 65, who would've given her a trophy for loving. They are people like me, who grew up without money, without manners and without social support, people who Eloise Childs took under her wing, guiding, scolding, preparing, teaching and loving. My debt to her is great, and the only fitting repayment is to do for others what she did for us. I pray that we love others with the same sense of compassion and investment that she showed us. I hope that, like Mrs. Childs, we can make the people in our lives feel like they are the center of the universe. THAT, is how you mentor.