Running Without Fear

Just Another Runner’s Perspective By: Gale Fischer September 2012

 

 

Running Without Fear

 

“We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.”

--Bush

 

September 11, 2001, 6:00 PM: Two running friends joined me at Lakeview High School’s football field for our running group’s weekly track workout.  We chatted about the day’s events as we waited to see if others in our group would join us.  We were not sure what kind of participation we would have that evening after the day's events.  The sun radiated its warm, comfortable glow on us and there wasn’t a trace of cloud cover in the sky.  The weather seemed typical for a late-summer day in West Michigan, with temperatures steady near 80 degrees, but this was not in any way a typical day.

 

I was just a few weeks into a new teaching job. Establishing a new working routine was not the smoothest of transitions.  My daily run turned into a coping mechanism those first few weeks as I sorted through the skills and preparation needed to get through each day.  As I made the short drive to my elementary school building this Tuesday morning, it was a bit of dejavu as I prepared myself mentally for another day of teaching.  In just a few short hours, a senseless and cowardly act of terrorism would create a huge turning point for our nation, changing our world forever.

 

There is a stigma of events such as 9/11, which leave a lasting impression on our minds and souls.  Similar events such as the death of JFK and Elvis Presley and the attack on Pearl Harbor carve a permanent page in our memory, with most individuals recalling where they were and what they were doing when they first heard news of these events.  Because of the generation that I am a member of, I have no recollection of Pearl Harbor or the assassination of JFK, so it is difficult for me to compare 9/11 to these events.  It is, however, the most significant event that I have witnessed in my lifetime, stopping the world in its tracks briefly and changing the course of history. 

 

Most individuals who are old enough to remember the events of 9/11 have experienced the changes that have had a profound impact on our world.  For those who were born after this significant day and for those not old enough to remember, these changes are simply part of their lives, and they know no differently.  Technology has taken on a new niche since 9/11 that would leave us helpless if it were not here now.  I often wonder how much the attacks on our home turf that day influenced these changes in our technology. Have these advances occurred as a result of the need for our intelligence to monitor and collect data to prevent future attacks?  We are able to communicate with others, share and access information, all with a click of a button on electronic devices without being restricted to a wire hookup coming from a wall.  There have been improvements in the medical field as well since 9/11, in particular prosthetics, as soldiers are coming home having lost limbs. These improvements have spilled over into our society in general, as civilians also benefit from these medical breakthroughs. Other obvious changes have impacted the procedures and policies for traveling nationally and internationally. Our economy has also taken a direct hit because of what happened on September 11, 2001. The running community has felt an impact since 9/11, with increases in the number of runners and the number of marathons, as well as races of other distances.  It seems as if individuals’ ideas about money, health, and bucket lists have been molded by the events of that September day, making running a viable, affordable, and healthy hobby.  Good or bad, these changes that were set into motion eleven years ago are here to stay.

 

An array of emotions poured through my body in the hours preceding the attacks.  Those emotions included fear, anger, sadness, numbness, uncertainty, and denial, as it felt like the images I was witnessing on television were more like watching a movie than viewing actual events unfold. I had planned on meeting up with my running buddies for the 6 PM track workout when the day began, but this became an afterthought when news of the attacks was first brought to my attention. As my workday ended, I knew that a run with some of my friends was just what I needed. As I drove to the track that afternoon, my feelings of uncertainty were introduced again as each gas station I drove by displayed spikes in price, doubling the prices that were on display eight hours earlier. 

 

Adam Sherk and Jim Lawrence were there waiting when I arrived at the track.  There were only three of us, but we were well represented in terms of age group and pace. Adam, who was twenty-seven years old, had run a 2:57 marathon in 2000 and would run a 2:43 a few weeks later in Chicago. Jim Lawrence had run a 4:27 marathon in 1999 at the age of 49.  I had clocked a 3:50 marathon in 2000 at the age of 31. We waited about five minutes and decided to begin our warm-up.  The conversations that take place during a run can vary in topic and length, but obviously the topic this day centered on the collapse of the WTC and the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

 

There are those individuals who have a direct connection to 9/11, having known someone personally whose life was taken as a direct result of the attacks. The impact on the lives of these individuals is very profound. I do feel that what the terrorists did that day took a small part of the lives of every US citizen, whether or not the life of a friend or family member was taken from them. Our freedom and way of life took a hit. 

 

Adam, Jim, and I were able to talk through the events of the day because of our running routine. The running schedule for all three of us that day differed because of our ability levels and pace goals, but none of that mattered. We opted out of our workout agendas and spent the next forty-five minutes running at a conversational pace as we shared our thoughts of this historic day. We talked about the emotions we were dealing with, who was responsible, and what the immediate and long-term future might look like because of the catastrophic events of the day. The conversation and time spent running didn’t take away the shock that the three of us and the rest of the nation were dealing with, but the forty-five minutes on the track that day left me feeling a little calmer as I drove home that evening. The terrorists who crashed three planes into the WTC, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania took something away from all of us that day, but they didn’t take away our daily routine.  Adam, Jim, I, and many other individuals went for a run that day and in the days to follow, showing the terrorists that they had not defeated us. 

 

Although our world was rocked that day, eleven years later there is a sense of normalcy.  In the days, weeks, months, and years that have followed, a daily running routine has helped many to deal with the results of 9/11. For many, running was a routine that they had already established. For others, running was a routine that they decided to begin because of the impact 9/11 had on their lives. 

 

Life is precious, and running is one of many ways to enjoy it. If you happen to go for a daily run on September 11, 2012, take a few quiet minutes to give thanks for the freedom to enjoy this great sport, a freedom that the terrorists did not take from us that historic day.

 

It is impossible to remember each and every run since I first laced up my running shoes back in October of 1997. There are particular memories associated with some of those runs that allow me to recall specific details. Just as I will always remember where I was and what I was doing when I first heard of the attacks on September 11, 2001, I will always remember the run that I shared with Adam and Jim later that afternoon.

 

 

KEEP RUNNING!!

Until next time, this has been just another runner’s perspective.

 

Kaylah Eddy Story

 Four Generations of Beavers

“A true community is not just about being geographically close to someone or part of the same social web network. It’s about feeling connected and responsible for what happens.”

—-Yehuda Berg

There are many among our staff who are former students and graduates of Harper Creek Community Schools. Some of these staff members also have children of their own who are former or current students in our buildings. This month’s Harper Unsung Hero, Kaylah Eddy, is a third-generation graduate of our district. Her family has extended this one more generation, with one of her own children beginning his first year of school with Harper Creek just a few weeks ago. “My mom and dad, Amy (Moore) and Brian Babcock, graduated from Harper Creek, and my son Felix is now a fourth-generation student in Developmental Kindergarten at Beadle Lake,” Kaylah said. “My husband, Steven, also graduated from Harper.” Kaylah’s paternal grandparents, Nancy (Krogh) and John Babcock, graduated from Harper Creek, as did her maternal grandmother Eileen (Rombaugh) Casebeer.

Kaylah is one of four siblings who have graduated from Harper Creek or are still current students. “I was born in 1997, the oldest of four,” she explained. “My sister Grace is currently an interventionist at the Middle School. My youngest sister Gwendolyn just graduated from Harper Creek last year, and our little brother Owen, who is in eighth grade, was one of my students when he was in sixth grade. It was very special having him in my class.”  Kaylah’s grandparents played an important role in her life as she grew up. “My grandparents and great-grandparents helped to raise me,” Kaylah noted. “They all lived close to us, and I spent a significant amount of time with them. It seemed that I tagged along with them everywhere.” 

Kaylah wasn’t a child who was comfortable sitting in front of a screen. “We would spend many of our summer months with my grandparents, who had a cabin in Frankfort, Michigan,” she explained. “I wasn’t one of those kids who played video games. I spent time outdoors, and I also enjoyed sewing and doing crafts.”

Kaylah had her first experience with school early on but not in a traditional preschool setting. “My mom started taking classes at MSU to become a nurse when I was three years old,” Kaylah recalled. “We moved to campus and lived in student housing. I would go to my classes with her. I remember bringing a notebook to class and pretending to be a student. When I turned five, my mom quit classes, and we came back to Battle Creek because my parents wanted me to go to school at Harper Creek. She went on to finish her degree at Western Michigan.”

Although the college classroom experience is a little different than a Kindergarten classroom, going to classes with her mom might have helped Kaylah prepare and practice for a structured setting. “I started at Wattles Park in 2002,” she said. “I remember going there in Kindergarten and knowing right away that I wanted to be a teacher. Mr. Eckert was one of my most influential teachers. He made me fall in love with science and teaching. I loved the Mackinac Island Field trip that he and the other fourth- grade teachers organized. Ms. Jenkins taught science on a cart and was a big influence on my love for science. She pushed into my first-grade classroom. I remember an experiment she led. We dipped white flowers into different dye colors as the flowers transformed to different colors. I also had her as a science and math teacher in fifth grade.” 

It seemed Kaylah loved everything about school. She just couldn’t get enough of it. “Outside of school, I was always playing school with my cousins,” Kaylah explained. “I pretended to be the teacher and also pretended to be the principal.” Kaylah gained her first experience working with children by helping out at home as the older sibling. “I started babysitting my sister Grace when she was an infant,” Kaylah said. “I remember teaching her how to read. Babysitting didn’t seem like a chore to me. I enjoyed doing it.” 

As an elementary student, science was Kaylah’s favorite subject. She would quickly develop a second passion as she entered middle school. “I joined the band in middle school, which is something I enjoyed immediately,” she shared. “I played clarinet in middle school. I continued with band through high school and into college. In high school, I played bass clarinet for concert band and was also the drum major for two years. I met my future husband, Steven, in marching band. We eventually started dating in high school.” Kaylah was also involved in athletics in middle school, joining the tennis team and continuing with this through high school. Her elementary school teachers helped to fuel her passion for a future career as a teacher, with many of her middle school teachers continuing to encourage her interest in education. “Many of my middle school teachers played a very influential role in my childhood, including Andrea Fronsmon, my sixth-grade math teacher, and Dave Carl, my seventh-grade science teacher,” Kaylah explained. “Friendships that I made in high school were also a part of what fostered my love for school. I met my best friend for life, Miranda Schaffer, in middle school. We are still great friends.” 

Band and science continued to be a big focus for Kaylah during her four years of high school. “I went to the math and science center my freshman and sophomore years,” Kaylah added. “I had to make a tough choice going into my junior year. I decided not to go to the math and science center the last two years of high school because it conflicted with the band schedule. Band was very important to me. At that time, I still knew that I wanted to be a teacher and thought maybe I would be a band instructor.” Kaylah’s high school band teacher was an important mentor for her. “Jared Cavis, my band director, was my most influential high school teacher,” she said. “He allowed me to intern with him while I was still a high school student. I helped with the middle school band. I was able to conduct at their concerts. I was also involved in the high school honors choir.”

Kaylah graduated from Harper Creek in 2015 and enrolled at Western Michigan to pursue a teaching degree and continue with her band career. “I was in the marching band for two years at Western Michigan,” Kaylah noted. “Steven was two years ahead of me in school and was already a student at Western. He was also a member of the marching band. It was great to be able to share this experience at the collegiate level with him.” Western Michigan compiled an undefeated football season in Kaylah’s sophomore year, earning a berth in the Cotton Bowl. Kaylah, Steven, and the rest of the marching band followed the football team to the Cotton Bowl to show their talents on national television.

Kaylah gained more experience working with children during her time as a college student. “I started working at the Air Zoo in the education department while at Western,” She said. “I also worked at a daycare center in Kalamazoo.” She also became a bride while in college. “Steven and I married in 2018,” Kaylah shared. ”He earned a degree in BioChemistry from Western Michigan and currently works at Zoetis in Kalamazoo. I graduated from Western in 2020 with an elementary education degree and an integrated math and science endorsement. I was unable to attend graduation because of COVID.”

Kaylah found a teaching job immediately, just as our world was in shutdown mode from the pandemic. “I started teaching eighth grade science at Gull Lake in the fall of 2020 during the pandemic,” Kaylah noted.  “We started fully online but eventually moved to a hybrid format. I was happy at Gull Lake and never really felt the urge to come back home to teach for Harper Creek. Eventually, I realized I missed the community that I grew up in at Harper Creek.” Harper Creek posted a teaching position for the fall of 2022 that piqued Kaylah’s interest. “When a sixth -grade science position at Harper Creek Middle School opened up, I realized that I wanted to come back to teach here,” Kayla said. “This will be my fifth year at Harper Creek, and I am shifting into a new position this year, teaching fifth- and sixth-grade science. I will also have my first opportunity to work with a student teacher in my classroom this year. ”

Kaylah has been blessed to be teaching science, a subject area that she loves very much. She has also been able to be a part of her second passion. “I helped with band camp here at Harper Creek while I was in college,” she noted. “I remained a part of this for three years altogether.” Kaylah was all in for returning to Harper Creek as a teacher, but there was a bit of a speed bump with this transition. “It was difficult at first to establish myself as a teacher at the school I attended as a child,” Kaylah admitted. “I was teamed up with Amy Smith, who was my former eighth-grade science teacher. Working with Amy has helped with this transition.” During her time as a Harper Creek teacher, Kaylah has also been involved with extracurricular activities, coaching for the past two years and organizing sixth grade camp for the past three years. Being a part of Harper Creek as a student, community member, and now as a teacher, she appreciates what the district represents and strives to make the school experience meaningful for her students. “I feel that all students need to be seen as part of the classroom community,” Kaylah said. “Education should be rooted in equity. Learning should be fun. Play is still appropriate in middle school. The thing I love most about Harper Creek is the community. I appreciate how our community shows up for our people.” 

Kaylah keeps busy outside of school as a young mom and with other interests. “Felix, our oldest son, was born in 2021, and Margot, our youngest, was born in 2024,” she noted. “They both help to keep life outside of school busy. My biggest hobby outside of school is quilting. My great-grandmother taught me how to do this.” 

The Harper Creek community has a way of making everyone feel like a member of a collective family. This feeling of cohesiveness seems to start with our school district, reaching out to all in the surrounding neighborhoods. Families like Kaylah’s, with multiple generations coming back to live and raise their children and having them educated in our schools, are a great illustration of the strength in our community.

It May be Different but it Still Feels the Same

Just Another Runner’s Perspective September 2026 By Gale Fischer

It May Be Different, But It Still Feels The Same

“Run often. Run long. But never outrun your joy of running.”

—Julie Isphording

Life is an ongoing cycle of moving forward. Changes are continuous, but there are also constants in life. We all move through different seasons of life, including toddler, school-age, teenage, young adult, middle age, and elderly. Each stage brings with it shifts in social interests, daily routines, individual preferences, and personal attitudes. Even with these changes, there remains consistency in our lives spanning a long period of time. Through the ebbs and flows of life, we all experience change while also walking a path of routine.

Running is a metaphor for life in many ways. Patterns that are noticeable in our sport are similar to the patterns we experience in all areas of our lives. In many ways, running can offer us a mixture of sensory input. In fact, variety is part of what keeps running fresh and exciting, and an activity that many choose to engage in for multiple decades. 

Living in the Midwest and experiencing running through the variation of each of the four seasons can add excitement when running might begin to feel monotonous. Enjoying the comfortable temperatures of spring and fall is always something to appreciate as a runner, but the heat of the summer and the winter cold can help to break one out of a running rut or keep the running rut from ever occurring. Each season bestows its own variety of beauty for the runner, from the breathtaking lush green colors of spring and summer, to the stunning orange and yellow hues of fall, and the pristine white canopy of winter.

Running variety can also occur in different types of workouts. Long, slow runs, fast-paced track workouts, easy recovery runs, and mid-distance tempo runs all create different sensations. The experiences of running diverse terrain, such as around a track, on a wooded trail, along a hilly country road, and through a busy city neighborhood, can each provide a different type of sensory excitement. The phases that each of us goes through in our running journey provide changes in what running can offer. The fast runner may one day slog through each run as the accumulated miles over the years alter what the body is capable of, or the speedy high school sprinter may one day transition to a middle-aged ultra runner running many more miles at a slower pace.

My personal running journey has spanned almost three decades. Through those years, my running has gone through many adjustments. I started running solo for more than a year, but eventually I found the running community. Since then, there have been periods of time in which the bulk of my miles has been with others and other periods of time when running alone has dominated my weekly mileage. Running solo can offer a different set of inputs than running with others. I have also adjusted the volume of miles I run. For many years, my running was uninterrupted, but for the last ten to fifteen years, injury has decreased the consistency of how often I can run. When I started running, I wasn’t so much concerned with pace. Eventually, speed became a part of my running, and I went through a period of time where competing in races dominated my focus. Eventually, my speed decreased, and so did the desire to compete. As different as each phase of my running has been, and with the variety I have intentionally targeted through the years of running, there are elements of my sport that are common to each and every run I have logged over the last thirty years. I will always feel grateful for the excitement of my running prime and the rush that came with it. Although three-hour marathons, eighteen-minute 5ks, and twenty-mile Saturday morning long runs may seem like running experiences from another lifetime, the mental rush that comes from every run remains a common feeling. 

For me, when running, there is always a sense of balance in how my mental, physical, and emotional realms work together in harmony, no matter the pace, distance, or sensory stimulus of where and when I run. The physical effects of running, including a raised heart rate, heavier breathing, and perspiration soaking my skin, seem to sync my mind and body. Running always seems to create an emotional high while also calming my nerves and giving me peace of mind. Running always gives me a sense of appreciation while enhancing all aspects of my life. No matter how much I struggle during a run, running continually brings me joy, and the sense of accomplishment is always there when the run is complete. Running always boosts my mood. There are many ways in which each run provides a unique memory or experience while also providing the same stable, familiar input. Whatever this experience happens to be, life is better with each run. 

Until next time, this has been just another runner’s perspective.