RINGSIDE
By Phyllis Edgerly Ring

Show kids the power of helping each other

Answer: I was in my third-grade classroom, watching the clock, hoping the bell would spare me humiliation because the math problem that matched my place in the seating plan was one I couldn't solve.

Question: Where were you when JFK was shot?

I remember my teacher, Mrs. Connor, coming back into the room as though she'd awakened in an unknown land. Shipped home, my fellow classmates and I spent the next days watching dark, sad images on black-and-white screens. In my memories, adults were somber, tight-lipped. Some cried, and they talked a lot among themselves. But I don't recall anyone really talking with me—and I had a lot of questions.

Fast forward almost 40 years. I'm driving through Atlanta on I-75 and suddenly, there's a new question—one whose magnitude we couldn't have imagined on that November day in 1963. The moment that defines how I'll answer this question for the rest of my life was one in which my father and I first saw the electronic message board over the highway last Tuesday that read "National Emergency—All Airports Closed."

We looked at each other for long seconds (something you obviously have to limit when you're hurrying along on an interstate). We'd just been reminiscing about his years in Civil Defense after his Army career, my mother's experience during London's Blitz in World War II, and the incredible good that terrible times often uncover in people.

When I reached for a radio station with answers, information was instant, and omnipresent, like reality TV. We'd been out of touch for 20 minutes since the catastrophic events erupted. Already there was an awful—an unfathomable—cascade of horrors too large to actually grasp mentally. The dangling detail of the unaccounted-for United-Airlines flight chilled me most. (Of course I hadn't yet seen the images of New York's skyline.) There followed a feeling of smallness and vulnerability unlike any I remember, all my illusions of safety coming down at once like the decimated towers.

Shortly afterward, downtown Atlanta was essentially evacuated, causing a gridlock we were blessed to miss by minutes. Our first stop 30 minutes south for requisite phone calls made some dent in our numbness. Then, about the time a Southern-Baptist-flavor came over the radio, an announcer asked, "What about the children?"

There were a lot of them as we journeyed on through the day, watching their parents and others glued to the horror in dismay. In his customary way, my father simply talked with them, something he's always had a gift for doing. He rarely walks away without leaving young smiles behind. That day, children's eyes simply seemed brighter for being noticed.

Eventually, our fast-food stops brought us closer to teens in their after-school jobs. In the South, it's easier to talk with them, ask how they're doing. (Courtesy has survived so well down there that some kids ask you first.) As we would all rediscover in the days to come, talking with each other brings a lot of comfort, even when it can't make something go away.

Humbled, I listened to some of their thoughts about how we shouldn't jump to conclusions about who had done this, how we should be careful not to show prejudice toward innocent people, how America would benefit from responding with the assistance and support of other world leaders. By the end of the afternoon, I was feeling a little bit of awe about what awfully good hands our future's going to be in.

Of course, schools are addressing what kind of counseling might help young people now, and our First Lady's public remarks voiced concern for their welfare. Peter Jennings spent a creative two hours with New-York-City kids in a Saturday-morning telecast.

But I hope we won't overlook the fact that it's not so much what we're going to tell them, as how well we're going to listen and respond to what they really need, and help them know that we believe they have important contributions to make, too.

In the broadcast hours of heartwarming stories that will keep "Chicken Soup for the Soul" volumes filled for years to come, one story stood out as I hung up the phone late one night after my third flight-cancellation. Three young guys from Iowa, ages 18-21, were featured. They had climbed in a car and driven to New York with the intention of helping out at Ground Zero, or "doing whatever they need us for." They were put to work at a shelter. "I just had to come," each said. "I had to do something."

What are we going to tell our children now that our way of life, like those flight plans on that dreadful day, has taken an abrupt turn? Well I hope we're going to make sure they notice—and emulate—all of the human goodness that indeed floods to the surface when things are almost too awful for us to bear. I hope we're going to help them deepen their resolve to find that greater and higher part of us, the only part with any truly lasting and powerful effect, and help them want to act on it.

As I took my place in a blocks-long line at Tampa's International Airport Saturday, every child I saw looked scared. Most of the younger ones clutched their backpacks like stuffed animals, if they didn't happen to be holding those, too. Their parents also looked grim. It was the first day flights were getting out in any significant number.

As we waited, absolutely everybody seemed to be talking with someone, and while children listened, adults told tales of human bravery and kindness that were increasing by the hour as we still grew magnetized by television screens. People were talking about goodness—and they were being very nice to children.

So often, adults don't even acknowledge them. But all sorts of people were chatting with kids, or telling them the best stories they could think of. And most of the kids were more or less holding it together.

Except for a boy of about nine who was waiting with his parents and younger brother to board the same plane I was. His terror had become too large for him to contain. His plaintive sounds were agonizing perhaps because so many of us had them muffled way down deep inside, too. His poor parents, exhausted after days of canceled flights, were doing their very best.

Gradually, others of us stepped forward to try to reassure him. A child who was clearly polite, he would hear us out, but then his sobs would return.

The pilot and flight attendants took gentle, patient time with him (and he was obviously impressed that the pilot talked with him at all).

But the person who finally made the difference was the grandmotherly passenger with the soft Southern accent who takes that flight every other week on a regular basis. She introduced all of the flight crew to him by name as her friends, and asked him a question I didn't hear, but that he took a while to answer. She told him it was OK if he felt afraid, and she told him that she'd felt that way, too.

Then she told him, "We need you to come with us, because it's important to be with your family and to go home. We need to be together because we all have to help each other now—that's how we can stay safe."

He got on the plane quietly. He suddenly remembered his bewildered younger brother and took cards out of his pocket so they could play together. I'm sure her words made good sense to him, and helped him realize that not only was he not alone in his fears, but that we had important things to do and that we needed him.

She seemed to know exactly what we should say and do for our children—and each other.