Sammy Yammy and HoPE

For those of you who have known us for a long time, you’re familiar with the name “Aron”.  Aron is our “Little Brother” through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.

In 1997, Steve and I decided that we wanted to get involved, and Big Brothers had just introduced their new “Couples Match” program.  The Couples program allowed married couples to be matched with a young boy with the hope that the married couple would be able to model a healthy marriage.  We were matched with 7 year-old Aron who quickly became a fixture in our lives.  Today, Aron is 18 years old, and we’ve been matched with him for 11 years!

Last night, we attended a special Big Brothers Big Sisters event celebrating Aron’s graduation from the program.  Even though he’s “graduated”, he’s still a very important fixture in our lives and has been a bright spot to us over these past few months of mourning.

Racing season has started again, so Steve and I went to Anderson Speedway on Saturday night. Last year, we began taking Sammy to a few races to support driver Josh Timmerman, the son of “Miss Debbie”, one of Sammy’s nurses. It was completely out of our comfort zone to take Sammy there, but Sammy loved it, so we took him several times.

Josh is a mature young man who wants to be known as someone who stands for something, and we are very impressed that he has allowed Sammy to touch his life and is willing to help us raise awareness about HPE by displaying the Families for HoPE logo on his truck. Josh drives in the Super Truck division, and this year, he has added a special tribute to Sammy’s memory on the tailgate of his truck! We were excited on Saturday night when Josh was leading the race for a few laps which meant that the other drivers were all getting a good view of Sammy’s tribute. We know that eventually someone will cause a big dent or scratch across the back of Josh’s truck, but since that hasn’t happened yet, Sammy’s tribute remains unscathed!  We’re just waiting for that day when Sammy goes with Josh to Victory Lane!