Jane Allen On How Healing Starts for Kids

We sit down with retired educator Jane Allen to trace how Stable Grounds grows from a school mental health shortage into a trusted place where kids find calm with miniature horses and donkeys. We talk through the moment the community could not ignore, the fundraising miracles that followed, and what it takes to keep a youth mental health nonprofit sustainable. 
• early warning signs in schools and why traditional services could not absorb the need 
• the auditorium question about suicide and why it became a tipping point 
• what groundwork equine-assisted therapy is and why Stable Grounds does not do riding 
• the story of a miniature horse choosing connection 
• how Stable Grounds gets land, a building, and community buy-in 
• the school partnership that keeps the budget manageable 
• current needs like feed, hay, veterinary care, and maintenance 
• interest from other communities and what makes the model unique 
• Jane’s path through teaching, coaching, leadership, and relationship-building 
• what we hope kids learn about resilience beyond the screen 
• the child Jane remembers most and the adults who stepped in 

This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded in The Riverbend building in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Music is provided by Sensational Sounds. Thanks for listening. We hope you are inspired and inspire good and your community.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Jane Allen

Marshall King 0:03

Welcome to the Inspiring Good Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Community Foundation of Elkart County, which serves a vibrant community in northern Indiana, known for its generosity and strong network of nonprofit organizations. I'm Marshall King, your co-host with Kevin Deary, a veteran nonprofit CEO who now coaches up. Today our guest is Jane Allen, a retired educator who has helped establish stable grounds as an amazing nonprofit in our community. Welcome, Jane.

Jane Allen 0:33

Thank you, Marshall. Hello, my friend. How are you? I'm great, Kevin. Thank you.

Why Stable Grounds Had To Exist

Kevin Deary 0:38

I am so privileged, Marshall and I, to have you on today's podcast. First of all, you're one of my favorite human beings in the world. You and I have known each other a long time, and we have broken a lot of bread together, usually at the Essen House. And also we've done some miraculous things for the children in Middlebury. Our ties to the Boys and Girls Club, you being one of the founders of the Middlebury Club, and me having the privilege to oversee the club. But we have talked, you're one of the few people that I know who go from the kitchen table to the board table, back to the kitchen table, back to the board table. That is that is rare. And now you are you had a dream. You and Kori Kripe from Middlebury Community Schools had this vision of starting stable grounds. Tell us about stable grounds.

The Suicide Question That Changed Everything

Jane Allen 1:48

Well, thanks, Kevin. I think this stable grounds became a dream of Corey's and mine from what we saw happening in the schools. Corey and I worked together. First of all, Corey was one of my students when I taught. That's how long I've known Corey. We we saw some things happening with students that we'd never experienced. And it was issues with the way they were changing behaviors, not just the young kids, but the older kids too, withdrawing and things like that. And the younger kids were experiencing running away, trying to hide and things like that, things we've never seen before. We even had teachers asking for help and trying to figure out how to deal with them, teach them, because they were experienced teachers and never seen any of this behavior. And these are kids who came from good families, who had really good uh grades and things like that, and all of a sudden things changed, and we had no idea how to deal with them. And counselors couldn't get them help because there was no room at Oakland. There was no room anywhere else. And and Corey, Corey had experience with using mental health therapy with animals, specifically miniature horses and donkeys. And she called me one time and talking about she couldn't get any of her kids at hair. She was a counselor at Heritage, and she said, I can't get my kids in Oakland. They're full. I don't know what to do. And I said, Well, no, no, no, let's talk. And so we met and talked about how to try to figure out. I was assistant superintendent at the time. This was 15, 20 years ago, Kevin, that this happened, that we started talking, and she gave me an idea and I said, Well, let's figure out another way if we can, blah, blah, blah. Didn't work, didn't happen. Fast forward another year, another year we kept talking. It kept getting worse and worse. And then I was named superintendent. And then we had the conversation again. And finally I said, okay, I was now dealing with the money aspect of the issue as well as the kid aspect of the issue. And stable grounds was Corey's initial idea. And we put it together with me doing the back end and Corey doing the front end in terms of what it is and I how we're gonna do it, kind of thing. We put it together that way. And spent another 10 years trying to sell it to people. Not quite that much, but and you were one of those people we tried to sell it to. And God put us together somehow and we figured it out. And I'll tell you, it's one of the it's one of the most miraculous things I've ever seen.

Kevin Deary 4:23

There was a tipping point that happened where you were speaking to the high school kids and you asked them a certain question.

Jane Allen 4:32

Actually, it was another speaker.

Kevin Deary 4:33

Oh, it was another speaker.

Jane Allen 4:34

And I was attending, and I had called one of my board members over because I heard rumblings through the grapevine. You know how you hear things when your superintendent people call you, as I did, you know, blah, blah. And I called one of my board members, come with me, let's go to this presentation. And it was a young man who had done something he regretted when he was younger. And anyway, he the auditorium at the high school was full, over 900 kids, almost a thousand kids. And he said to that auditorium, and these are our juniors and sophomores together in that space how many of you have ever known anyone or have yourself either attempted or considered attempting suicide? And the room hands shut up, literally. I bet it was almost three-quarters of the room. First of all, I gasped and then I started crying, and my board member at the same time, we were both in tears. This is our kids. This is my kid, these are my kids that I've helped raise. What is going on here? And that was my okay, this has to happen. We have to figure out how to do it now. And I had been a superintendent for maybe two or three years, and this that's it. We can't wait anymore. We have to figure out how to make this happen. And started pushing farther and harder and finding a way and figuring it out after that. That was it. That's what did it for me. And then we started gathering data from that point on. And I I think that's what impacted the board member also to make sure that that never left her mind either, and how we were gonna move forward with that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

How Groundwork Equine Therapy Works

Kevin Deary 6:15

So clearly the genesis was Middlebury Community Schools as far as identifying the need, and that being the area that even though you were partnering with other organizations, you knew that you needed to have come up with some solution to get to get to children who were in need before they even contemplated a suicide type of question. So you have this plan, this thought about little ponies and little little donkeys, and proven, data driven, that they make a difference. And I remember the first time I heard this, I don't even remember where you and Corey were speaking, may probably Essenhouse. And I remember you there was a story talking about a child who was very, very upset. It wasn't was the teacher couldn't handle it, was thrown off the whole rest of the class and the teaching cadence. And this child was taken out to a smaller donkey or or pony, and magic really happened. Can you talk a bit about that?

Jane Allen 7:16

The court it was actually a court-appointed situation where the kid was in trouble because of the behavior in the classroom. And the kid did not want to be in that situation. They didn't, they were sent to Corey's had a uh she had that at her home. So she did not want the kid didn't want to be there at all. And Corey said to the kid, There's there's a horse out here, there's a couple horses out here and and donkeys. You you gotta be here, so you just deal with it. We don't care if you want to be here or not, you're going to be here. So she walked out into the middle of the pasture, madder, madder than a hornet. And she just crossed her arms and laid right down on the ground. Just laid down on the ground. And along came one of the minis, one of the miniature horses, and literally laid right down beside her, up next to her, which those of you that know horses know that they don't lay down typically. That's not what horses do. But that horse sensed that's what that young woman needed at that moment, and her whole world shifted right in front of Corey's eyes, right in front of her eyes, and it changed her life from that minute on. That she started talking to the horse and you know, petting the horse, and the horse ended up with her. She sat up then, and the horse laid his head in her lap, and everything shifted. And knowing that Corey I had to trust, obviously, to help this is what this is why it works. The horse knew there were three or four horses out there, and that horse knew I need to go over there. Nobody whispered in that horse's ear what to do. They just knew. And this is what this is what's so new unique about this therapy. And of course, these horses are trained, you know, and and obviously in therapy, have a lot of hours, clinical hours, but nobody said what to do, it just did it.

Kevin Deary 9:26

You know, you hear about therapy dogs and you hear how much training they have to go to. How do horses and pony and and little donkeys get trained?

The Donkey Named Kevin

Jane Allen 9:38

They do hospitals, nursing homes, and things like that. And Cory raises hers, most of them, some of them she breathes in, and that's how she gets them, but she also gets them from places where they've been trained in therapy. That's a special therapy because we don't do any riding. That's what people get confused about. There's no riding at all. It's all a groundwork where the horses figure out how to what's needed here, and they sense it. They know horses are made that way. They were God made them that way. They are sensed, they're able to sense what is necessary.

Marshall King 10:12

So, Kevin, I'm going to turn the tables on you and ask the two of you to tell a story together a little bit because you were involved a little bit in the origin of stable grounds. We're recording in my office studio, and up on the shelf up there is a little stable grounds wooden horse. I call him Kevin. Why might I call him Kevin? Tell us this story.

Kevin Deary 10:35

So, yes, so Jane's one of my favorite people, and Jane came to me with with Corey and asked one day. I was still uh CEO of Boys and Girls Cousin. We were doing a campaign in Middlebury, uh, looking to raise quite a bit of money to expand our our uh organization, our club to serve more kids, and asked me uh to share this dream with me and and asked me if I would help with the fundraising. And I love children as well, and I love Jane and Corey's idea was a concept to me, but I believe them. Uh they're the experts. So I said I would, but I had one request, and and that request was they would have to name one of the donkeys after me, because I especially like the donkeys. And so now there's a donkey named Kevin. Yes, there is. So that was that was quite an honor, and he likes me. Yes, he does. He likes me. And I like him because I'm a city boy who doesn't touch animals.

Jane Allen 11:30

I know you don't like animals. I don't.

Kevin Deary 11:33

That is the only animal, horse pig cow that I have ever touched, other than a dog. And that's you know, is Kevin and he likes me. I also sneak him little hard candies. Yes, you said this, yeah. You said I could.

Marshall King 11:46

So, Jane, picking it up from where Kevin tells a story, you had to go put some legs on this. Yes, I did. By, you know, doing some big asks. Tell us about how you went into the Middlebury community and Bristol community and what the result was.

Jane Allen 12:03

Well, first of all, once Kevin allowed us to go to the Boys and Girls Club board and present this uh as an idea, if we would be allowed to jump onto their capital campaign. Then I needed to figure out who can help us besides that, and where are we going to put it and all that sort of thing. So the first thing I did was if I'm going to ask somebody to help build this, I need to find out where. And I went to the Essenhouse family when I called Lance Miller, and I know him very well, him and his wife Jill. And I said, Lance, can you come have a conversation? And I explained to him what we wanted to do, and he was really on board right away. He said, Let me talk to the family. They own some land right adjacent to the Middlebury School's uh property. We didn't want to build it on the school grounds, obviously, so we wanted it off campus, but close, and this is adjacent. So we went ahead and I talked to him about it, explained it to him. He said, Let me talk to the family. And he came back two weeks later and said, We would like to donate the land to you, which is three and a half acres of their prime property adjacent to our campus. And that was a miracle in itself, and it was just it was amazing. And when we spoke to the Boys and Girls Club, Kevin gave us five minutes to tell a story and talk at the end of the board meeting because he didn't want to waste their time. And but that was okay because you give you know a bunch of us more time, we'll talk too much. And we explained why. And I had data. I had I had to pull the data together because when you're talking to people that are very conscious about funding and all of that, you have to have good data. And the data I took, first of all, we told the story about the kids at the high school, but we also then surveyed those kids at the high school and got more information as to what was bothering, why there were so many issues, and it was stress, literally, that they did not know what to do with. And we'd asked counselors in every building if we had this idea and it was already built and it was open today, how many kids could you send to us right now? And we totaled that up in Middlebury Community Schools. At that time, we had we had about 4,500 kids. They said 754 students, and one and and that just blew every all of us away. And I we explained that and talked about that at the board meeting. And after the board meeting, one of the board members came up to me in tears and said, You're not going to have to join the campaign for the Boys and Girls Club. Somebody else will build this for you. It needs to be built right now. And that person had experienced friends of his who had taken their own lives. And it was so close to his heart, you could just read it in his face and in his tears, too. It was just one of those things that he said to me, if you can change one life to make this better, we have to do this. And consequently, then throughout all of those conversations, we were able to have the Peggy Weed Foundation provide us with the funding for the whole building. So we had the land and we had the building, and those two conversations, and it was that in a lot that alone was miraculous to me because I never considered myself a fundraiser in any way, shape, or form. I just had lots of good relationships with people and appreciated my community very much and what they had done for us at the school district. And so that was the beginning. And then how to figure out going forward, once we had a building and we had the land, how are we going to keep it moving with how are we going to run it, basically? Because I didn't want to run it with me doing all the fundraising for millions of dollars for and I figured out another way to do that. And we were really fortunate in that respect. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Sustainability Partnership And Endowment Plans

Kevin Deary 16:16

So you've put together a board of directors. It's it's so much fun. I find so much joy finding you on my side of the fence. Well, uh, as far as becoming a nonprofit executive and learning board development and fundraising and and and really just learning it quickly and being able to grab stable grounds and be able to have them serving kids quickly, have a group of volunteers who help everything from muck out to stalls to help raise money to help uh provide hay, whatever the community can do to help you. What needs do you have right now, stable grounds?

Jane Allen 16:53

Right now, we our goal as a nonprofit is to our all our all we have to do as the nonprofit is make sure that we have the money for the feed, the hay, and the vet care for the animals and maintenance of the building. We're very fortunate in that respect. We have a partnership with the school district, and it's very it works very well for us in that in that respect. We have we're also are are working toward making sure we're sustainable in the future. And that's been my goal. Our goal is to also put together an endowment for the foundation with the with the Elkhart Community, the Community Foundation of Elkart County. That's our other goal. I think honestly, if we hadn't figured out the way to make that partnership work, I'm not sure we would be here right now. That partnership with Middlebury Schools is so unique. That to me was one of the best parts about it because I don't have to raise millions of dollars because our budget is less than $100,000 a year, which we're really fortunate in that respect.

Kevin Deary 17:58

And that's hard enough to raise.

Social Media Stress And Counseling Gaps

Jane Allen 17:59

It is hard enough to raise. We love those people that give us dollar bills. We love those people. We those are the people that we like the most because they're giving us what they can afford. We love the guy that brought, when we said we needed hay, he brought a bale of hay. God bless him. You know, those are the kind of people we love because they really care about what we do. We're taking care of children, and we've been able to serve children who lost their moms, children who had family members pass away unexpectedly, children who were struggling with grief or abuse or all kinds of situations that we didn't have to go through when we were kids, because we had different circumstances in our life. And we grew up in a different time when there weren't so many things coming at us, like social media and things like that. So we've been able to make some big changes because of the way that Sable Grounds works and the way the partnership works with the school district.

Kevin Deary 19:02

It's pretty fair to say that we have children that are on overload social media. They're accessed, they carry around cell phones that allow them to get information from all over the world, to see images, to watch videos and movies and nonstop streaming. And we wonder why children are struggling with character development because they're trusting what's in their their their hand, their phone, instead of trusting trusted adults who could guide them along the right pathway. That is a big challenge. And then they get overwhelmed, and then when something bad happens at home, they lose a parent or there's a divorce or somebody gets sick or just all the other things that go along with providing grief. The other thing that I noticed has changed is in middle school, when I was in middle school, if if you had a problem, you could go to your guidance counselor and talk to your guidance counselor. It made a huge it took a lot of the air out of the angry in me and the emotional in me, even in seventh, eighth grade. That really helped a lot. But then the way things have moved, guidance counselors have moved away from guidance. They're really doing other things now in many school systems. They're career prep, they're c getting you ready for college. They're not necessarily available in those in those precious times when kids are angry. I just wish there was a time we could go back to that. So and I know, sorry, I kind of went on a little thing there, but you're right.

Growing Demand From Other Communities

Jane Allen 20:30

Our counselors and the board policies say they can only meet with one kid three times. Well, that's not enough. And that's what the beauty of stable grounds is so different, too. It it's not like sitting in an office and talking to someone. It's totally the opposite of that. And I think it's not bad, but it's it's a good thing in a in a way that we do something different that way.

Marshall King 20:50

So, Jane, you in creating stable grounds using equine therapy, you kind of created a unicorn where this program has gotten a lot of attention locally and even beyond. Talk about like the asks. What when your phone rings, what are what are people hoping for? I like you could be three to multiple times bigger than you are because of the interest from other communities, right?

Jane Allen 21:19

Yes. We've asked, we had people that have that have asked us how to start their own. What do we need? Can we come see? And that sort of thing. We've we've brought in probably five to six schools that have brought teams of people to come and look and see if and ask us our opinion if they if we think they can do it. We've had many different folks come and hope that we can help them with their situations. Never seen this before because most of the time the therapy is writing, and this is totally different. Now, there are a lot of places that do have groundwork therapy, which is through a gala, which is that's the Training system that we use for our horses and people. But the beauty of it is the connection with the school district and then bringing from the outside. We already serve folks from Oakland that we have a partnership with them, that we do some work with them. And they have said, in some ways, the things that we do, they cannot do. And they are so thankful that we are here. So we have people that we could fill. We have a second arena that we, you know, requested for a grant. We got a grant from the career pathways committee at the foundation. And we could fill that arena right now, all day, with first of all, our waiting list at Middlebury Schools, if they were, if there was money there to cover that. But for paid, you know, for uh fee-based people to come in and pay fee-based, we could fill it right now. We could fill it all day long every day. And evenings as well.

Kevin Deary 22:58

So you have interest from Amish Bishops. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jane’s Path From Teacher To Leader

Jane Allen 23:04

Well, they they've seen some of the situations that we have served some folks that that have needed help. And we have we have had them come and say, let's see some more, you know, and and that kind of thing. And we've worked with a lot of uh families, specifically both men and women, and students, not students, not fully adult, I think 18, 17, and eight eighteen-year-olds, and and helping them make decisions that are much better for them than what they were doing. And I think that's where that whole s thing shifted for them to see, and using the animals as well. Because I think we treat them differently, the animals a little bit differently than they do.

Kevin Deary 23:51

So I know it's gonna be uncomfortable for you here, but I'd like to learn more about young Jane Allen. Uh-huh. Like where you grew up, what made you become a teacher, your coaching. Tell me, tell us about that. Oh gosh, Kevin.

Jane Allen 24:06

Well, you know, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a nurse until I, you know, one of the kids threw up and the nurse had to clean it up. I thought, well, I don't want to be a nurse anymore. But then that I had a fifth-grade teacher. I was really mouthy as a kid. Can you imagine that? I got decent conduct. Anyway, I think that's why that made me a good teacher, because I knew what everyone was thinking and what they wanted to say. And I uh was told by one of my teachers, I think you should go into education. I think you'd be a really good teacher, and that's all it took. You know how they always say tap on the shoulder? Boy, that helped me tremendously. And that's what I did. And I loved every second of it. Wanted to do that my whole life until somebody tapped me on the shoulder again and said, you could make a difference, more of a difference, even. And I did. I taught elementary for four years in Indianapolis, one year in Warsaw, and then three in Indianapolis, coached there, was able to jump on board of a coaching program that was very successful, and actually won the state in the in women's basketball for before it was class basketball back in 1980 at Southport Cardinals, but then moved up here to get married up to Goshen and jumped on board at Middlebury in 1982 and never left until I retired in 2021. So I I was so blessed, Kevin, to be in the right place at the right time. That to me, I worked really hard at what I did. And I was really, I worked really hard at teaching, and I love being a principal because I was a middle school teacher at in Middlebury. I was able to take all of the things I saw in middle schoolers that I had hoped, if I would have got those kids a little bit earlier and those parents a little bit earlier, we might be able to make a difference in how things happened when they got a little bit older and helped kids learn a little bit better. And I don't know. I just had this vision, you know, that we could work together. My whole life has been building relationships. I wasn't the smartest, I wasn't the obviously the richest or anything like that. I just wanted to build as many relationships as I could that were meaningful to me and those around me. And and I think that's, you know, probably what was the b best success because I always like to have fun too, even with our administrators when I was superintendent. We you have to have a good time or you can't work sometimes. You know, you have to know how to enjoy what you do and love what you do.

Kevin Deary 26:36

Aaron Ross Powell You were known throughout the Middlebury community schools for a stay of school for the teachers that you would do something funny to welcome them back. What is what are the top three things that you did? Well, I know what mine was.

Jane Allen 26:50

My favorite was when I made my administrative staff do a flash mob to thrill her. And we had one of the gals, her daughter was a dance teacher. I said, Okay, here we go, and we're gonna learn this. You are going to learn this. And we got people up there that wouldn't have done that for a million years, but we had so much fun. So I mean, those are the things you just do because I could I could make them. But you have to have fun.

Kevin Deary 27:18

Have to have fun.

Jane Allen 27:19

You have to have fun and you have to enjoy and you have to appreciate those folks around you too. And I think that to me was oh, I appreciate everybody so much because we I had wonderful people I taught with and I worked with it when I was a principal. Wonderful people. We did we all had our hearts. Our hearts were made for kids, and you know that's what it was all about. It was making lives better for our children.

Kevin Deary 27:41

I remember somebody asked me to find to just describe you in one word, and I said contagious.

Jane Allen 27:49

Oh.

Kevin Deary 27:50

That's the word I chose for you. That's interesting. In a positive way, not a bad way.

What Jane Hopes For Kids

Marshall King 27:54

Jaden, I I don't remember exactly when we met each other, but I you have a large fan club, and I would be a a prominent member. And and this, you know, this excitement and this contagiousness that you just talked about. I remember at Burgers and Brew one year, which was a fundraiser for the Middlebury Boys and Girls Club, they it was they had the Middlebury Community Schools had a team, yes, and you all won. Yes, and you were so excited, and you were on stage holding up this belt that signified that you had won. And I'm like, the superintendent of at Middlebury Schools is up there as if she just won an Olympic medal. And I don't mean that pejoratively, like I mean that in a lovely way, and it was just so remarkable because you were so excited that you had raised money for the Boys and Girls Club, that you were in this community event, and that your colleagues and you had achieved the the win, so to speak. And it was just a lovely thing, and that that's kind of symbolic. When I think of Jane, I think of that day. But what we need some of that excitement and that love and that having fun, like you talked about. What I mean, you're a retired educator, you're still coming into contact with kids. You what is it? We've talked some about how kids are struggling. What is it that you really hope for from this generation and the ones that come after? And that's different than the question that we'll ask at the end a little bit, but what is it that you really want for these kids?

One Child Jane Never Forgot

Jane Allen 29:24

Well, first of all, I want them to see there's more out there in the world than what's in front of the screen. They need to, they need to exp they need to experience being together and conversing together. And I think things are shifting in that direction, which I hope that's that's going to happen. I also want them to be able to have the strength and the wherewithal to get through what comes at them. That's the most important thing to me. I've and I've even been asked to speak to, I have a part of our junior, I'm an optimist in Middlebury, and I had have a we have a junior optimist club that's at the high school, and I've spoken to them about that. That you feel like this is happening to you right now, and you're never going to make it through this. You can't live through this. Yes, you can, because I had to live through things like that in my life that I thought I could never live through this. I remembered every single one of the kids in my high school, the boys in my high school class, we knew their draft numbers because it was right at the cusp of the Vietnam War when they were draft, and they would bring up the new numbers, and we knew, well, that was Greg. He's he's gonna have to go, and we don't know if we'll ever see him again, if he's gonna live or not. I didn't think I could live through that. And I explained that to those kids. You have to have faith that you will live through this. You you will live through this. You need to just remember that and keep moving forward and find ways to have that hope and build that stamina, that strength with each other, that you're gonna get through this together. Because you you could do it alone, some of you, but in most cases it works much better when you have others with you to do it together. That's what I hope they learn that somehow.

Kevin Deary 31:10

You know that last year I had the a little health sabbatical where I had some surgeries on my head, my brain, and survived. He'd be happy to hear I survived. But one of the joys that I had was waking up to one of our students at Middlebury Community School nurse who was a member of the Boys and Girls Club and who loved, wanted to be a nurse, and and that tap came at the Boys and Girls Club and to become a nurse. And here I am waking up, and she was the first person I saw, and she couldn't wait to tell me that. And it just goes full circle as far as you know that we've we gave our our all, and then it it gets returned back to us in in the most beautiful ways. And now this is this is my last question, and it's really hard. So you think back to how many children that you have touched over the years, lives changed, taps of your own on their shoulders. Who's the one that you remember?

Jane Allen 32:20

I'll tell you, there was a little first grader. I get emotional. Her mother was, I think, incapacitated due to drugs. Her father was in prison due to drugs, and she was being raised by her grandmother. And she had an I was a principal at the time. She was in first grade. She came to the office because she had an earache, a horrible earache. We didn't have nurses back then. We took care of our kids in the office by ourselves. And I was in my office, and our secretary as a mom had a towel up next to her, a warm towel up next to her, laid her head on it, and she's in the office. Well, that took about five minutes of that, and I couldn't handle it anymore. I didn't know what to do. So I went down to her classroom and I said to her teacher, I'm gonna cover your class. Please help her. I don't know what to do. And she went down and to the office, and I stayed in the classroom and did first grade math, which was a riot. I'm sure for the kids too as well. Anyway, and she came back down about a half hour later and I said, How is she? She said, She's asleep. I said, What did you do? She said, I rocked her to sleep. That simple. And she was the one I watched and watched over all the way through, even to the point when she was in high school. I paid attention to her. I'd see her in the in the uh you know, the uh cafeteria when I'd walk through and that sort of thing. And she's now a teacher in another school system adjacent to Middlebury. And that to me, I think probably was one of the most important ones.

Kevin Deary 34:17

So you gave her stable ground to walk on.

Jane Allen 34:19

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kevin Deary 34:21

That's a beautiful story.

Jane Allen 34:23

Well, you know. Yeah. It was everybody there trying to make a difference in that kid's life. You know? Grandma couldn't come and get her. We took care of her.

What Gives Hope And Closing

Marshall King 34:35

Yeah. So Jane, we're gonna close the way we often do. What gives you hope?

Jane Allen 34:44

Marshall, that's a really that's a tough question. I I have uh first of all, I'm an optimist, and people around me tell me I wear rose-colored glasses all the time, and I don't care. I do. That's how I live. And my hope comes from there's always a new day, and there's always another way to change a life no matter what. It's whether you meet someone on the street that needs a smile, or you see somebody in the grocery and you make a joke about not being able to reach something and things like that. Everybody, we're all human, and it doesn't matter who we are, where we are, we're on this earth for a purpose. And I think my hope, what gives me hope is that everybody out there, I think and I hope, is all feeling the same as I am. We have we have hope. We just have to find the people that hope along with us. I know in this community that in which I work and live, with sable grounds especially, people care about children. And I think that to me probably gives me the most hope. That I've never had to ask for anything for a child that we didn't get what we needed. And that is the probably the most important thing for me. That going forward, we know we will be able to take care of our kids the longer we live.

Marshall King 36:13

This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded at the Community Foundation's offices in Elkart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communications students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Music is provided by sensational sounds. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkart County at inspiringgood.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired and inspire good in your community.