Carolyncholland's Weblog

June 30, 2011

Short Life Long Lived

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

SHORT LIFE LONG LIVED

Russell E. Roy

The following poem was written by a board member of the Greater Jamestown Family Support Program, a former child abuse program in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.  It received  funded from a Pennsylvania Children’s Trust Fund grant. Its mission statement was to heal adult survivors of abuse to prevent them from passing their abuse on to their children.

I was pleased to be the facilitator of the grant, which I wrote. I directed the program, presented educational classes to the board and community, and in general performed administrative tasks. In counseling persons who were experiencing problems I learned as much as they did.

Russell E. Roy was blind by the age of 19. He was in his sixties when I came to know him. He delighted in writing poems on a tape recorder, and his friends often called on him to write special poems for their family and friends. He wrote this poem when the Family Support Program ended after a four year run.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

In November of 1990 and one,

The Family Support Program was begun.

Some of us who are here today,

Were not there on that starting day.

We cannot tell the good that was done,

Or the goals that were gained by the race that was run.

Members come and members go,

But the facts live on through the ebb and flow.

As individuals we kept in touch,

We each might think we don’t count for much.

As a group we thought (more…)

Theme: Rubric. Blog at WordPress.com.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 62 other followers