“I don’t want to lose any young men. I look at it as me being a vessel through God to minister to these young men,” Proviso East High School head coach Aaron Peppers, who is also a Maywood policeman, told Chi Trib in an excellent page-one story by Brian Hamilton.
This is rock-solid stuff. Peppers grew up in Maywood, is a Proviso East alum, lives there still. His charges are threatened by the allure of mostly-black Maywood’s mean streets.
“That’s the hand we’re dealt in this community,” Peppers says. “Just know that you’re not going to coach football. You’re not just going to be a police officer answering service calls. You’re going to have to teach. You’re going to have to love. If you’re a selfish person, you’re going to have to change.”
As we used to say in the Jesuits, edifying — considerably more so than an account of a celebrity finding God, as we sometimes read. It’s a religion story of merit.
Another good one, by the way, was Manya Brachear’s account of the senior minister of First United Methodist Church, also known as Chicago Temple, across from the Daley Center, who reads poetry to his former English teacher now stroke-ridden, bringing him back to life as it were.
This was “Their Friendship: Pure Poetry,” on 8/31.
Blithe Spirit 