People Who Inspire Me
A Random Act Of Kindness Has Far Reaching Impact
On National Mentoring Day, A Reminder To Be An Inspiration
On National Mentoring Day, I want to share this beautiful story from the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Cincinnati.
Anthony Howard thanked his mentor-his Big Brother-in the perfect way. He became a Big Brother himself. Anthony says:
When my mother first signed me up for the program I didn’t think much of it. But today I truly believe that my mother putting me in the program has put me where I am today. My biological brother and I shared a Big Brother, David Spaccarelli, and he impacted both of our lives tremendously. My brother and I lacked a father figure or other male figure in our life to look up to and David became and still is that guy. I started with the program at age 13 and today I am 23, and I still speak to my Big Brother on a regular basis. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas we get together at his parents’ house for dinner. David has helped me during high school and college, and also helped get me the job I have today. 
About a month ago, I decided to start giving back to the program. I now have a Little Brother by the name of Brien. We both share an interest in sports and play basketball and football together. Brien also likes to play video games so our next adventure will be at an arcade center where you can play all the games you want for an hour straight! I am really enjoying being a Big Brother and can already see the impact I am making on this young man’s life.
I would like to say to people who are thinking about joining the program as a “Big” to do it. You don’t know how much you can impact someone’s life ,whether you’re just throwing a football in the backyard with your Little, being that friend to go to lunch with, or just being that someone to talk to. I would like to give a big thank you to David as well as the Big Brother Big Sister program as they have both changed my life in a way that is challenging to express through words.
A Lesson Learned From Ludwig van Beethovan
Challenges and obstacles are a part of living and growing that allow us the opportunity to dig deep within ourselves to find strengths we would never have explored otherwise. Those opportunities are great lessons in this journey that is called life. If we choose to conquer and learn from them, we can grow in so many meaningful ways.
Ludwig van Beethovan, one of history’s most masterful composers, began losing his hearing when he was 26. The next 20 years of his life saw his world become silent. But only to his ears.
Beethovan continued composing, and created some of his most influential pieces – among them, the Ninth Symphony – which is considered one of the greatest works of music ever to have been written.
In an online interview with WQXR, Joseph Straus, author of Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music, spoke about Beethovan. Below are a few excerpts.
“Instead of his deafness stigmatizing the music, it is understood to valorize the music – to make it better or transcendent in some way. The turning point in Beethoven criticism comes from Wagner. To him, Beethoven’s deafness wasn’t a negative thing, it was a positive thing. It permitted him to enter this strange, transcendent realm where he was able to compose this music, cut off from the conventions that constrained composers who could hear.”
Interviewer: Is it dismissive to wonder whether his deafness may have resulted in unintentional results or even hampered his potential?
The consensus these days is “no” — that if the deafness had any impact at all, that it was liberatory, freeing him up to move beyond common compositional conventions of his day. And I think that’s probably accurate in some way. He was no longer able to do practical music-making, such as performing as a pianist, and conducting, and life naturally became more self-contained, hermetic, and isolated. That clearly has an impact on the kind of music he wrote.
…So, what I think I heard Joseph say was that doing things differently did not by any means stifle Beethovan. It only brought out other strengths that caused his talents to go way beyond those of others in his industry. What a great gift!
Cincinnati Volunteer Pete Bushelman Impacts Thousands Through CISE
There are people in this world who generously give of themselves without any want for return. They quietly contribute in ways that touch others in very meaningful ways.
Pete Bushelman is one of those people. Over the past 33 years, he has impacted the lives of thousands of children through is involved with Cincinnati Catholic Inner-City Schools Education Fund (CISE).Single-handedly, he has raised over $2.5 million to give kids from Cincinnati’s urban neighborhoods an excellent education at a CISE school.
Pete has been a member of the CISE Advisory Board since it was formed in 1980 by then Archbishop Joseph Bernardin.
According to Sharon Civitellos, CISE communications coordinator, “Pete is not a figurehead chairperson. On the contrary, he acts as a committee of one and does everything from calling on his raffle ‘customers’ to writing and mailing out thank you cards.”
The first fundraiser undertaken by the CISE Advisory Board was the “Friends of CISE” Raffle. Pete agreed to chair the first Raffle more than 30 years ago and has served in this role ever since.
From late August each year until the day of the Friends of CISE Raffle drawing in December, Pete is on the phone with 800 of his close friends and associates encouraging them to purchase their raffle tickets. Pete’s persistence pays off with more than $120,000 being raised annually for CISE through this one event. Collectively, that amounts to over 1200 raffle tickets sold valued at over $2.5 million!
At over 80 years of age, Pete continues to give his all to making the Friends of CISE Raffle a success. He amazes his colleagues on the CISE Advisory Board with his tenacity and drive to raise funds for the education of children from Cincinnati’s urban neighborhoods. Without Pete’s determined efforts, the future may have been quite different for the young people who received a solid academic and spiritual foundation at the Catholic inner-city schools during the past 33 years and have gone on to college and careers.
Pete’s volunteer work is not limited to CISE. He has dedicated his life to helping others. Any day of the week you might find Pete delivering food to the homeless or a local food pantry, raising funds for one of his other favorite charities, or helping his invalid 
next-door neighbor who has been able to remain in her home thanks to Pete’s care.
Over his lifetime Pete has actively served on over a dozen non-profit boards and continues to look for ways to help those in need.
And Greater Cincinnati is better for all of us because of people like him.
About CISE:
The schools supported by CISE are St. Boniface in Northside, Corryville Catholic, St. Francis Seraph in Over-the-Rhine, St. Francis de Sales in East Walnut Hills, Holy Family in Price Hill, St. Joseph in the West End, St. Lawrence in Price Hill and Resurrection in Price Hill.
To learn more about CISE and how you can help, please visit www.CISEfund.org.
I want to thank Sharon Civitellos for supplying information for this post.
After Boston Marathon Bombing, Mery Daniel Is Living
Mery Daniel was in the right place at the wrong time.
On a beautiful day that should have been marked by victorious emotions, shouts of joy, and celebratory hugs from those
Mery Daniel
who came to participate and those who came to watch the Boston Marathon, Mery, like so many others, came to learn time is a precious gift.
The bombing spared her life, but the blast ripped apart her legs, shearing off her right calf and forcing doctors to amputate her left leg above the knee.
In a Boston Globe article, Erik Moskowitz told of Mery’s childhood dream of becoming the first physician in her family. She was 17 when she moved from Haiti to Brockton with her father whom she had not seen since childhood. She was a stand out student and role model to others. Later she went on to attend medical school, marry and have a daughter. She was preparing for her final medical licensing exams when she attended the Boston Marathon that fateful May morning. And, in one brief moment, her life as knew it would never be the same.
The next six weeks were spent in surgeries and hospitals. She was only able to see her terrified five-year-old daughter three times. Her life journey had taken a sharp turn. Extraordinary challenges faced her ahead.
Bills were mounting. She needed to learn a new way of getting around, and needed to find a new place to call home that was accessible for her new lifestyle. There were times when she forgot she was minus a leg except for the fact that her phantom pains were almost constant.
Mery craved mobility. She desperately wanted her life back. She was determined. People around her had equal resilience. She learned to get around with a prosthetic and hand-cycle. Bonnie St. John, an African-American amputee and paralympic skiing medalist helped created a fund raising site to help ease some of the burden. The day after Mery’s first steps, chi
ldren who rode the school bus her father drove participated in a walkathon to raise $8,275 for her.
Mery’s next goal? To enter an athletic race. It had been on her To Do list for a very long time but just was something she hadn’t gotten to yet. That needed to change.
And change it did. Mery recently completed her fourth race riding her hand-cycle, the longest being a 27-mile ride to help veterans…longer than the Boston Marathon.
