Speaker challenges for positive impact

Students filed into the gym at Wahkiakum High School last Thursday morning talking to each other about the assembly they were about to see.

“I don’t want to watch this,” one student said to a friend as they walked up the bleachers together.

“This is going to be depressing,” his friend said, nodding in agreement.

As the last of the people came into the gym, Principal Loren Davis asked the students to please try to fill the center section of the bleachers. Doing as they were told, the crowd grew silent and Davis introduced the day’s guest speaker.

Derek Kilgore, a member of the Rachel’s Challenge Team, took the microphone and thanked Davis. “How many of you have lost someone close to you in the past two years?” he asked. Many students raised their hands and Kilgore continued saying he wanted to dedicate the assembly to Rachel Scott and to all those the crowd had lost as well.

Kilgore told the crowd that Scott was the first person killed in the massacre known as Columbine. She was only 17 years old when she died. At the time, it was the worst school shooting in history.

The crowd wept as Kilgore showed security camera footage of the events that unfolded that fateful day, April 20, 1999. For two years, teenage gunmen Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris planned and prepared for the massacre by watching violent movies, listening to violent music and playing violent video games.

“They became violent people,” Kilgore said.

Scott’s funeral was broadcast on CNN on April 24, 1999. It was the largest viewing audience in CNN history, Kilgore told the teary-eyed crowd.

Rachel’s Challenge began about two years after her death when her father Darrell Scott, found her diaries and pieced things together. Kilgore said he became involved with the organization in September, 2006. “I have a heart for helping the weak and small,” he said. Kilgore said it is important for him and the group to keep Rachel’s story alive. “Teaching kindness and compassion is worthwhile, I’m very privileged and grateful to be a part of it,” he said.

Scott’s goal in life was to make an impact. At the age of 13, she traced her hands on the back of her dresser and wrote inside the image, “These hands belong to Rachel Joy Scott and will some day touch millions of people’s hearts.”

Rachel’s Challenge is the number one school assembly in America. Last calendar year (06-07) the Rachel’s Challenge team spoke to one million students and this year (07-08) they will speak to one and a half million students.

As a team, they will visit every state in the nation, and next year will go international. “Our goal is to be in every elementary, middle, high school and college in America,” Kilgore said.

In an essay written a month before her death, Scott wrote, “I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same.”

In the weeks following her death, the Scott family received many phone calls from students and adults alike that said Scott had touched their lives in a special way. But one phone call was touching in a different manner.

Frank Amedia lived more than 1000 miles away from Colorado, but one day he called Darrell and told him that for the past two weeks he had had the same dream of a young woman’s eyes with tears watering something on the ground. He said he wasn’t sure what it was, but it was life of some kind. He asked if that had any meaning. Mr. Scott said it really didn’t. Amedia asked if he would please take his phone number and call if it ever did. Darrell agreed and put the number in a drawer, Kilgore said.

The next week, the sheriff’s office phoned and said that Rachel’s backpack, which was being held for evidence, could be picked up. Her father went immediately to retrieve his daughter’s things. When he got back into his car, he took out each item, one by one, and discovered his daughter’s last journal. Opening it to the last entry she ever made, he discovered a drawing of exactly what Amedia had described.

The program asks attendees to accept five challenges when they leave. Eliminate prejudice by looking for the best in others; Dare to dream, set goals, keep a journal; Choose your influences, input determines output; Kind words, Small acts of kindness equals huge impact, and finally; Start a chain reaction with family and friends.

Thursday’s assembly seemed to have an impact on all those who watched it. Davis said he thought the program was outstanding and everything he had expected it to be. “I watched it twice and cried both times,” he said.

Student Sarah Doumit wiped away tears as she left the gym.

“You don’t realize how little things affect people around them,” she said.

Her friend, Samantha McClain, agreed saying, “It makes you think about what is important in life.”

“It made me think about friends and family,” said Jessica Asmus as she joined her two friends in a group hug. All three said they intended on accepting Rachel’s Challenge.

Rachel’s Challenge is a non-profit organization. Donations can be made through their website at http://www.rachelschallenge.com.