I just read this news item and thought how nice that the spirit lives on.

Woman returns favor to former teacher
December 09,2006



McALLEN — The gift was simple: red and gold ornaments and a tiny silver star on a Christmas tree small enough to sit on a table. To McAllen native and Harlingen resident Norma Salazar, it meant thanking her former elementary school teacher Eduardo Reyna for an act of kindness dating back three decades. For Reyna, a teacher who has spent most of his 33 years with the McAllen school district at Brown Middle School on South Ware Road, it meant realizing a teacher could still make a difference in a student’s life.

Salazar, a 40-year-old migrant counselor for Texas State Technical College’s High School Equivalency Program in Harlingen, delivered the tree to Reyna in his sixth-grade mathematics classroom late Friday morning. She told his class that when she was 10 years old in December 1976 it was cold and her family was struggling that particular holiday. There were no decorations or gifts in her home. Then a student in Reyna’s fifth-grade classroom at Zavala Elementary School, she looked at the miniature tree he brought to decorate for the season and, on the last day before holiday break, asked him if she could have it. Salazar said Reyna told her he had promised a school custodian could have the tree. "I walked home very sad that day," she said.

Shortly after she got home from school, Salazar said there was a knock at her front door. She opened it and found Reyna standing there with a miniature Christmas tree in his hands, just for Salazar and her family. "Even though we didn’t have gifts, we had that little tree," Salazar said. "I never forgot Mr. Reyna’s gesture and kindness and compassion toward others." Salazar said she and her family used the tree for many holidays until it started to fall apart. As even further sign of her appreciation this year, Salazar also gave Reyna a musical snow globe during her visit Friday. Reyna had his own surprises for his former student, as well. He gave her a framed photograph of her class from the 1976-1977 school year. "Oh my gosh, I can see myself a mile away," Salazar said. And he gave her a framed composition she wrote for his class detailing how she wanted to take him to the beach and eat free ice cream. One of Reyna’s students this year, 12-year-old Allan Cedillo, said Friday’s exchange taught him to help, rather than judge, others.