Observe (Personally)

December 22, 2010


I had planned a journal entry for today that involved a youtube video and wind.  I can save it.  


Instead, I'm going to exercise a point of personal privilege this morning, much as Congressman Chet Edwards did on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives last night.  I encourage you to watch the entire twenty-five minutes if you have the time as he talks about what is right and best about America (this video starts about half a minute before he takes the floor, but it was the best I could do in the way of editing the C-SPAN video so that you didn't have to watch the preceding ten hours and 57 minutes of deliberations).  If you don't have a half an hour to spare, skip to the second clip I have embedded below (SPOILER ALERT:  Erin plays a featured role as her legacy becomes part of the permanent Congressional record.).  It's just a minute or two that comes near the end of his speech.  Let me know what you think.

Clean

March 12, 2010

With warmer temps (at least here in Texas) and copious sunshine, some of you may anticipate doing a bit (or a bunch) of spring cleaning over the next few weeks. I know I am. If you find that you have things you would like to dispose of, consider this:

On Saturday, April 24, Erin's school, Jane Long Middle School, is having a garage sale. This is not just any old garage sale, where someone tries to sell their garage or even the junk in their garage. This sale is the major way the the Jane Long PTO funds the Erin Buenger Scholarship, established in her memory.

If you are interested in cleaning out your garage and donating some items to our sale, we have a place to store those things between now and then. Let me know (vbuenger@mays.tamu.edu) .

Since what I know about garage sales can fit on Teddy's toenail, I sought and got advice to help guide your giving:

Things That Sell:

• Baby/toddler clothing in good condition
• Toys
• Furniture in pretty good shape
• Home Electronics (tv, radio, dvd players, etc.)
  
• Art Supplies
• Anything for kids
• Computers and Equipment
• Art Supplies
• DVDs & CDs
• Gardening equipment
• Art & Collectibles
• and more!

No thank you - doesn't sell:

• Bed mattresses, sheets
• Items too "used" or worn
• Magazines, books
• Anything dirty or dusty
• Anything torn or with stains
• Shoes (unless new and unworn)
• Most clothing not for babies/ toddlers
• Upholstered furniture not in great shape

In the meantime, clean has pervaded our lives, from the clean jokes that Walter prefaced his Presidential Address with last Friday evening.

To Walter and my making a convincing clean sweep over UT (t.u.) in the first round of the First Annual TSHA pool tournament in our suite after the Presidential Banquet last Friday night.

To the clean up of the house and yard when we returned from Dallas, so that we could host a meet and greet between local Young Democrats and Congressman Chet Edwards last Sunday evening.

Now, while I'm on a roll, I'd better get cleaning.

Consider

February 18, 2010

First, a reminder. No Odd Friday Lanyarding at my house tomorrow. I am hosting the first annual Iron Chef competition for the soccer team tomorrow night, plus we have the big NCL Bead-a-Thon in The Woodlands on Saturday.

Spoiler alert: if you tuned in for humor, dog stories, or stapler quizzes, you will be disappointed. If you are willing to consider points of view that you may or may not agree with, you will not be disappointed.

Davis once pointed out the beauty of information graphics, visual aids to make information more accessible and understandable. Here is one, released yesterday, that struck home with me:




Walter encouraged me to show you this so that you would understand why we support Chet Edwards' vote on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and his re-election to Congress. The video that follows shows Chet with the owner of Frazier and Frazier Industries, Inc., in Limestone County (up the road from here), the only company in Texas to get a stimulus loan. Without the loan the company would have closed its doors, leaving 300 people out of work. Coolidge, Texas, home to this company, has a total population of fewer than 900 people.

Breathe

October 16, 2009


Breathe. That's what I kept having to remind myself this week.

On Sunday evening the bureaucratic wheels in DC started turning, splicing, slicing, dissecting, and parsing the possibility of mentioning Erin in President Barack Obama's speech at the Points of Light conference hosted by former President George H.W. Bush in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Points of Light Foundation.

This was a very low probability event. Almost completely unlikely. Maybe 1 in 330,000,000.

It took most of several days for a final decision.

It happened despite the odds.



Erin was such a political junkie that I have to believe that she would have appreciated all the twists and turns the week brought, and especially the VIP treatment at the talk. to put her fervor into context, here's a selection from the entry I wrote the day after the election last fall, appropriately titled, Junkie (Politics and Pickles).

Erin returned to school yesterday, medicated with tylenol-3, and when I picked her up she seemed washed out and spent. Oh me of little faith. After a brief rest, she started getting geared up for the evening. She began by flipping through all of the television channels, matching the channel number and the network to the television program guide, thus creating a list of which channels were covering the election at what times. Then, she found an internet list of states organized by their poll closing time, which she highlighted and marked with various information about whether they were safe, likely, leaning, or toss up states and if there were contested Senate races in them. By 5:30, she had staked out the prime spot on the living room floor. As the first polls closed and the pundits and analysts started chanting over the numbers, Erin had the remote in her hand, surfing channels, while simultaneously clicking through on her laptop to sites like http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ and nytimes.com looking for the freshest returns. Every time a state went in her favor (actually Barack Obama's favor), she headed to the kitchen for a celebratory pickle! I wonder what her sodium and potassium levels will look like when she has her labs drawn tomorrow?

Here is a link to the C-SPAN video.

This video begins with President George H.W. Bush, with President Obama following. Erin's story is near the end (Around 26:30), but I think the message of service is one you might not mind sitting through. Of course, you will want me to add commentary and soon, but for now, I'm trying to remember to breathe.

Thanks all around: to Chet Edwards for having the idea that Erin was just what the President needed for his speech and for having the audacity to pursue the idea, to Jim Papa for selling the idea, for the speechwriters to capture Erin so succinctly, yet accurately, and to our President for delivering.

And thank you all for following Erin's point of light.

Introduce

August 26, 2009

My Congressman, Chet Edwards, showed he was a patient, gracious, and I have to say, brave man. He stood up and answered all questions--some many quite hostile--for two hours in front of 1200 people and maintained his poise. If you don't understand what this means, you have probably been on vacation and had the national news off of several weeks. I had the amazing opportunity to introduce him tonight at the Health Care Town Hall he was holding.

When I visited with Chet backstage beforehand, he thanked me for my willingness to introduce him and apologized for asking me to do something so hard. I told him that compared with other things I've faced this didn't seem that hard.

Here's what I said and here is a link to the entire town hall first hour of the actual video (for my intro, skip the commercial and go forward into the video about 40 seconds) and here is the second hour.

Good evening and welcome. I’m Vickie Buenger, an almost lifelong resident of Brazos County. Many of you know me better as Erin’s mom. My daughter, Erin, died this April after fighting cancer for seven years. She was almost twelve. It is because of her that I am here tonight.

I have the pleasure, privilege, and honor to introduce to you a man long on credentials: he’s a nine-term U.S, Congressman, representing the 17th district of Texas, a senior member of both the House Budget and Appropriations Committees, and Chairman of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee. In addition, he serves on the Financial Services Appropriations Subcommittee, as vice chair of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, and co-chairs the House Army Caucus.

You could get this information from his website or resume. I’d like to introduce the man I know through my daughter Erin with whom he shared warm respect and mutual admiration. She viewed him not only as her Congressman, but as a great person and a great friend. She admired him as an attentive listener and a caring and thoughtful person.

Here’s the story of the first time Erin and I met Chet, in her own nine-year-old words, which she felt compelled to send to The Eagle, so everyone else could know about their Congressman, too:

“I went to Chet Edwards’ office in Washington D.C. to ask for his help with a bill about pediatric cancer research. We were scheduled for a short meeting, but he gave us more time and even made people wait while we finished talking. He listened to me and my mother and took what I had to say seriously. He is good to me, and I bet he will be good to you, too.”

She left out the part that impressed her the most that day. He kept a big bowl of Skittles in him office and shared them with her as we talked.

As their friendship deepened and grew, we got to know many facets of Chet. He was a true family man and dad–Dining in the MSC at a pre-game lunch, between rapidly flowing conversation and clattering forks, Chet looked over and noticed Erin, sitting at his side, was eating everything on her plate, except her piece of roast beef. Without missing a beat, he reached over and cut her meat into bite-sized pieces for her and without a word about it, continued his conversation. Now, I don't think cutting other people's meat is necessarily a skill you have to hone to be a good Congressman (in fact, it might bother your colleague if you cut up his meat for him at a Congressional banquet), but it sure told me that Chet was a clued-in dad and that he cared about people.

As a fifth grader Erin was chosen to teach her fellow students about how a bill becomes a law. She wrote Chet for his advice, and learned that he would be in town the day she had to teach. So instead of advice, she asked him to come to her school to help her out, adding in her email to him “and you would be a great visual aid.” In fact, he did help her co-teach and was the best visual aid any fifth grader ever had.

We have this caring, thoughtful person with us this evening, Erin’s “Best Adult Friend” and our Congressman, Chet Edwards.

Service Recap--Part II

April 21, 2009

We've made it to San Jacinto Day where Texans come off better than they have in the last week, when our governor has made news around the country for less auspicious reasons. We will celebrate today by going out to dinner with Ted, Joanie, and Payton Foote. Then we'll go and watch the White Sox (Jackson and Aaron's Little League team) play ball.

I made a giant step of accomplishment today, finally dispatching the last of my built up email correspondence. Given that I had gotten behind by about 350 "owed" responses, I can now breathe a sigh of relief. I still have the email that came in on Walter's account, so if you haven't heard from us, we're hurrying. I am not totally mesmerizing myself with the computer screen. The burst of beauty that has come out after last weekend's big storms has continually lured me outside (to walk the devildog and just enjoy the major influx of birds to the neighborhood, the medley of greens every where, and of course the famed texas wildflowers). I won't pretend we don't miss Erin terribly, but we are trying to let her vast spirit fill us up rather than empty us out. I find that I thirst for details about her--the tiny stitches that pulled the pieces of her life together.

We had five friends speak at Erin's memorial service (possibly over the top, but it didn't seem fair to ask anyone to fly solo): Lisa Villalobos, Ginger Freeze, Joel and Jackson Ross, and Chet Edwards. They all did such a fantastic job that I barely cried while they spoke for fear that I might miss what they had to say.

Here are their remarks:

Lisa Villalobos, Erin's soccer coach, my coahing partner, and team captain of my soccer team, spoke on soccer and team spirit. As is usual with Lisa, she went a little "off the book" during her talk, but these are the notes she prepared:

I’ve been asked to speak about Erin and her love of soccer and her participation on the team.

Some of you may look at this little girl and think that there’s no way she could have played competitive soccer.

Let me assure you that she did and was effective. I specifically remember one time her coming off the field and all of her teammates looking at her with wide eyes, saying “ooh, you made that girl mad!” The other girl obviously underestimated Erin, who repeatedly stole the ball away.

She would also come scrimmage my ladies adult team and do the same thing. Size was never an issue with her.

She was an excellent observer of the game and could quickly identify issues for her team. She would often come out at halftime and explain that if we could just do this one thing better, we’d gain an advantage.

If you know anything about me and coaching soccer, you also know that I put a lot of emphasis on the character-building part of team sports.

When the Mystic team met last Thursday, one resounding theme was that she was inclusive. They mentioned during minicamp that Erin taught them all a card game that included everyone. Erin was good at that. Whether it was one-on-one or in large groups, she had a way of connecting with people in ways that were meaningful.

Another story was about her persistence. We talked about how, in the state cup tournament last year, Erin got hit, hard, with a ball. But despite that, she got up and kept on playing.

Ask any of my team members what my rule #1 is, and they’ll say “sportsmanship.” Erin really lived the term. She carried a positive attitude and smiled, a lot. She was patient with people, whether it was on the field or off.

What I find remarkable is her belief that she can do anything, even when her body didn’t cooperate. Even through last spring when she started having more back pain, Erin was determined. She continued to attend practice and do as much as her body let her. It was never about I don’t feel like it or I won’t. She only stopped when it was “I can’t.”

I will say, however, that she was a real kid. I saw her get mad. I saw her play with toys. All she wanted to do most of the time was be a kid and do what kids do. And she did that with great gusto.

We had so much to learn from her. Her passion for life, her compassion for others, and her easy and contagious smile. She will be truly missed.

Ginger Freeze, learning specialist at Mary Branch Elementary was never Erin's classroom teacher, but in many, many respects was her mentor. She based her remarks on the words and feelings of many of Erin's teachers about Erin, school, and creativity:

Erin was a gifted and curious student who always excelled in everything she did because Erin never quit until she was satisfied with her work. She wanted to do and be in everything. In second grade, she began participating in UIL (University Interscholastic League) and continued to compete each year trying different events. When she was eligible to be on Student Council, there she was getting experience in government. As a fifth grader, Erin was a helper in a second grade class and on the video crew producing morning announcements. Erin was one of those students who needed more than the regular curriculum. Her curiosity and ability to think outside the box pushed many a teacher to have to dig for information or seek materials to challenge this one-of-a-kind student.

Erin always had goals for herself. She wanted to be an artist and she wanted to be the first woman President of the United States, but for the staff of Branch Elementary, Erin was our teacher. She taught us what it means to give of ourselves when she hand made Valentine cards for everyone in her class. Erin also taught us to always show our appreciation for others by passing out her ‘goodbye’ gift to those who touched her life while at Branch not only to the administrators and teachers but also to every lady working in the cafeteria. That is the kind of student we celebrate here today.

A fifth grade teacher said, “Erin was unlike any student I have ever had. She was truly passionate about learning and about helping me make sure my class was a family and remained as such. She cared about her friends and classmates just as much as she cared about pushing her envelope of knowledge.”

The librarian shared that Erin was always looking for a new story to read. She specifically remembered Erin's request for Agatha Christie novels during 5th grade!

The Art Teacher stated, “Erin’s smile was the outward expression of her love for learning, for creating, and for inventing. She was delighted and her whole being absolutely sparkled after finishing a particularly difficult art project to her satisfaction. … During the planning stages of projects she would often dream up unusual ideas that required further problem solving. She had the confident "can do" attitude knowing that eventually she always would figure out a way for something to work.”

Our PE coach wrote a letter to Erin and with his permission, I share a portion with you.

“I'll never forget the day we timed you guys for Jump Rope for Heart. I was part coach and almost felt like part father at the time as I didn't want you to push yourself too hard but like always, you refused to quit. … You may or may not have appreciated what happened in that room that day as your legs, heart and lungs were burning but the classes in that room rallied behind you like nothing I've ever seen. Even the kids that tend to be self absorbed and very ego centric in their behavior were clapping and chanting in unison with your jumping cadence and even as I write this I get chills every time I think about it.”

In closing, “Erin was a spark of energy and creativity that brought joy to all of us at Mary Branch. We will miss her so much. She was like a fiery comet in the sky that streaks through quickly and is gone; but oh, the magic and joy she brought us!”

Joel and Jackson Ross, one of Erin's closest, dearest friends and his dad. This may be the hardest thing you could ever ask a friend to do.

My name is Joel Ross. My wife, Shirlene, my son, Jackson, and I have been blessed to call Erin, Vickie, Walter, Davis & Moo friends these past 7 years.

Erin & Jackson first met in preschool at Covenant Presbyterian in College Station when Jackson was fondly known as “Monday-Wednesday-Friday Jackson”. Shortly thereafter, Erin was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. Over the years, Erin & Jackson have been schoolmates, teammates, playmates & most importantly of all, dearest of friends.

I know many of you have wonderful stories to share – each one special and unique- about what your friendships with Erin mean to you. Jackson would like to take this opportunity to share some of his thoughts with you.

Jackson:

Erin has been a great friend since preschool. We have played soccer together and done many fun things as best friends. I had the pleasure of getting to go to school with her for almost eight years. Although we had our differences we always saw past them and had a great time. I have come to meet some great friends because of her. Erin was a fighter and a brave girl. She fought for so long and fought so hard. She was courageous in the face of fear and a very smart friend. She was an extremely smart person who always had new ideas and thoughts on how to make things better and more enjoyable. Nobody will know what to do without her; we will all miss her good mood and gigantic grin. We will all miss Erin and we will never forget her. We are all so sad to see her go, but she is in a better place without pain or suffering. She is smiling again and as playful and caring as ever.

As many of you know all too well, Erin has a bright, vibrant, outgoing personality. She is so full of energy, life & love that she wants to share it with everyone. Just about everyone she meets comes to call her “friend”. Because of Erin’s circumstances, she has had the opportunity to develop friendships – and touch lives – in many different walks of life:

*Through school – her classmates, teachers, administrators

*Through sports – her coaches, teammates, & even opponents

*Through church – her pastor, ministers and church family

*Through NB – her doctors, nurses, other NB patients & families;

*Government leaders, & even a few NFL football stars

As you can tell if you have read the postings on Erin’s blog, she even has hundreds, if not thousands, of friends from all over the world that she has never met.

Erin is always so encouraging to her friends, even when her own circumstances are difficult and challenging, as when she cheers her kid-friends (& occasionally some adult-friends) who are playing WII while she is forced to watch from the sidelines. Erin is a true friend – never afraid to tell a friend what they need to hear, even though it is not necessarily what they want to hear.

You may have noticed that I continue to speak of Erin in the present tense. That is because she continues to live in all of us – in our hearts and in our memories – and through all of us – through our support for other NB patients & families and our support for the fight to find a cure for this terrible disease. She continues to touch our lives in so many ways. Through her efforts to raise awareness of the need for additional funding for children’s cancer research, she will continue to touch many more lives in the years to come –even the lives of people who have not been born yet.

Thank you.

Chet Edwards, Erin's Congressman and closest adult friend, came back to Texas at the end of his family's spring break trip to Vail (we were glad he made it to the bottom of the slopes every time with no injuries. . . no small accomplishment given the challenges and races he had with J.T. and Garrison down the most dangerous runs) to attend Erin's visitation/celebration and to speak at her memorial on the topic of service and inspiration:

Sometimes the best gifts come in the smallest packages. Such is the case with Erin Buenger. She was a divine gift to her family and to all of us blessed to know her.

Her life, her joyous spirit and her indomitable courage will inspire us all for as long as we shall live.

Like so many others here, I fell in love with Erin Buenger the first time I met her. How could you not, given her sparkling eyes, her exuberance for life and her commitment to helping others.

Each of us has our own Erin stories. Mine is that I first met Erin several years ago when she came with her mother to Washington to speak out for more research funding for children’s cancer.

I’ve met a lot of lobbyists in my lifetime, but never one more persuasive than Erin.

The problem is that with rare cancers such as neuroblastoma, private companies simply aren’t going to spend millions of dollars to research new drugs, so, as Erin pointed out to me, the government must do more. Because of Erin Buenger, the government will do more.

From that day forward, I joined the legions of Erin fans.

Teaching, at its best, is about inspiring others to be better, to do better. In that sense, this remarkable little girl was one of the finest teachers I have ever known.

Through Erin’s joy of living every day fully, she taught us how precious life truly is.

Through Erin’s positive attitude, despite her daunting medical challenges, she taught us what courage truly is.

Through Erin’s thoughtfulness to others, she taught us that life is not about self but rather about making a difference for others, about being our brother’s keeper.

What a difference her life has made in yours and mine and for so many others.

Whether we here have never met, or just known each other for a few moments or for years, our common bond is our love for Erin. I believe we can honor that love by living every day more fully, by facing adversity with courage, by making a difference for others and by sharing the story of this beautiful little girl.

My faith teaches me that heaven is a better place today, and the world will be a better place tomorrow because of the spirit of Erin Buenger.

Thank you, Vickie, Walter and Davis for sharing your precious Erin with so many of us. For that, may God bless you and forever keep you and Erin in His loving arms.