Patti Myers
She’s passing along her philosophy of kindness
If I had to guess, the photo accompanying this story shows Patti Myers peering around a corner with only a glimpse of her face visible. In some way, Myers will try to convince the photographer that she is either unworthy of attention or that receiving recognition all but cancels out her good works.
Her sentences will race together and her voice will rise to a pitch that matches a 5-year old in front of a cartoon. She desperately wants to be elsewhere, perhaps buying lunch for a youngster at the grade school who forgot his money. Perhaps taking a pot of soup to a rookie teacher she knew was working late grappling with the demands of the job.
Or signing up a boy for baseball and making sure he had transportation to and from the endless summer practices so he could be involved like other kids. Or offering her twins’ clothing to other young parents or sending clothing to hurricane victims.
Maybe she’d rather be at the Salvation Army donating toys during Christmas in the names of teachers she and her family wanted to honor. Or taking hot cocoa to the school crossing guard on a frigid day.
She’d rather be anywhere but calling attention to the many kindnesses she bestows upon her neighbors and friends every single day. After all, this community is full of terrific people. Why her?
“There’s just things I do because I can,” she said.
“A long time ago, in another lifetime, in another state, I was in the position to really have to accept kindness from strangers. It was a very difficult thing. I vowed that if I ever got to the position that I could pay back, even if it wasn’t to the people who had given to me, that I would do what I could to make somebody else’s world better in any way.”
It meant not only passing on her philosophy to her children but also demonstrating it. It had to become a way of life.
“You can’t teach integrity unless you demonstrate integrity,” she said. “I can’t teach compassion if I don’t show it.”
But that’s where this recognition thing comes in. She is afraid that taking any credit for the way she lives her life somehow negates the value of her gifts. It somehow contradicts her very being.
You be the judge.
A family with whom her husband works made Christmas toy donations emulating what the Myers’ family does each year.
They donated the toys in Patti’s name.
Her son Patrick Barnes, 14, is a freshman in high school. He will use his earnings from a job at Fareway and spend a week on a medical mission in the Dominican Republic this summer.
You never know where the ripples will end.
— Susan Harman
