Journalists toss stories like stones into still waters and sometimes don’t appreciate how far the ripples spread.
Last month, I asked readers to tell me about stories they’d seen in The Inquirer that left an imprint on their hearts. From near and far came inspiring responses about articles and photos that had moved readers to act or prompted them to think in new ways.
Lansdale teacher Chris Detwiler found lessons for her students in a story by Michael Vitez that was published just before Valentine’s Day 1998. Jim Way’s faithful devotion to his wife of 53 years was unbroken, even though Alzheimer’s disease had claimed her brain. Every day, Way, 81, went to a nursing home and spoon-fed lunch to his beloved Wynne, who hadn’t recognized him for the last six years.
“I am a teacher who is forever searching for present day ‘heroes’ for my students to learn about,” Detwiler wrote. She talked to her pupils about loyalty, love, and the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, then 13 fifth-grade students at Walton Farm Elementary School wrote to Way. He responded with thank-you notes to each, leading to a yearlong exchange of letters. Wynne Way passed away in the spring of 1999, and her husband died a few months later.
Way’s son, Geoffrey, called Detwiler at school “because he knew my students and I would want to know,” she said. “Mr. Way had shared all of our letters with his family during our year of correspondence.”
A photo essay by April Saul on a young mother’s struggle against breast cancer touched the heart of Kate Castronuovo of Northeast Philadelphia. “I had to stop several times to wipe away the tears while I read that story,” Castronuovo wrote.
Tina Glacken died last fall at age 39. In one photo, her young son tugs on her wig, which became his security blanket. “He still sleeps with it,” the caption read.
After seeing the photos, published May 7, Castronuovo decided to walk in an annual fund-raiser for breast-cancer research, the Race for the Cure. Her daughter, Sarah, 12, joined her in what they hope will become a Mother’s Day tradition.
“Imagine my great joy when some people passed me wearing signs memorializing Tina Glacken! ‘Those people over there,’ I told my daughter, ‘are the reason we are here today.’ ”
Allison Reed, 35, of Collegeville, a wife and mother of two young boys, was so moved by the story of the starvation death of Charnae Wise, 5, in her North Philadelphia basement, that she sent a donation toward her gravestone. In a two-part report, Shankar Vedantam in 1999 vividly recounted the desperate life of the mother, who was convicted of the murder.
“Just the thought of that little girl dying alone in a dark basement brought on tears,” Reed wrote.
Three readers pointed to Art Carey’s June 4 column on the death of his next-door neighbor, Kathy O’Rourke, who Carey surmised died of a broken heart. Another reader phoned in his choice: Dan Gottlieb’s Dec. 20, 1993, column on why he decided he wanted to live after an accident left him a quadriplegic.
It’s not only the long pieces that can make readers stop to think. From Wurzburg, Germany, labor lawyer Richard Wolfe was impressed by an editorial, just seven paragraphs long, that he read online March 21. It mourned the passing of Mime Clark, a street preacher who had held forth with fire and brimstone outside City Hall.
“The article was truly poetic in the way it described one whom society would call a ‘nut’ by speaking of her kindness.” Wolfe liked that the editorial “left open the possibility that maybe our smug age is the crazy actor in this scene.”
