Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503140015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-18 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ADRIANNE BEE CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
Meet Tommy the Bear, a stuffed animal flying the friendly skies to teach second-graders at Montgomery County's Belview Elementary School about the world beyond them.
Tommy has enjoyed the sunshine in California, traveled to England and savored France, to name a few of his stops - even if he hasn't shown up on Leach's ``Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'' yet.
Cindy Clemmons, the student teacher for Ann Talton's second-grade class, learned of other schools using teddies to teach and decided it would be good for her children to see the world through Tommy.
When Clemmons talked to her pupils about their travels, she found most had been limited to Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. ``When we started talking about Paris and England, that was totally foreign to them,'' Clemmons said. ``I thought it would be neat for them to explore different people, different parts of the world.''
Tommy, clad in a Virginia Tech T-shirt, flew out of Roanoke Regional Airport in November well prepared for his world wayfaring. His backpack carried a letter that explains he is voyaging vicariously for the Belview second-graders.
Tommy's backpack also holds an autobiography and self-portrait of each child and note cards and stamps so he can write home to his pals (actually so flight attendants and new friends can write for him, but shh ... don't tell the second-graders).
``The children think of Tommy as a member of the class,'' Clemmons said. ``He's like another student.''
The bear even has a passport for when he goes out of the country.
Tommy is also well-stocked with disposable cameras so he can share the sights with his friends back home in Christiansburg.
``When he was in Michigan, he stayed with a bronze-medalist from the 1984 Olympic games,'' Clemmons said. ``She took his picture with her medals around [Tommy's] neck and all her trophies around him. That was really special.''
Today, the children scurry to sit down in front of the world map where Tommy's travels are charted. Two children grab a stuffed bear they have dubbed Tommy's cousin.
``That's their connection to Tommy while he travels,'' Clemmons explains. The children lean forward as she reads a new letter from Tommy.
Tommy's letter is from Cheshire, England. He tells the children he has been to Paris (again), and the island of Antigua in the Caribbean. Clemmons shows them the Caribbean on the map along with the paw print that signs the letter. Clemmons asks the children to point to London, Paris, Ontario and Africa on their map and hands shoot up into the air. They know, thanks to Tommy, where these places are.
Each child has aspirations for Tommy. ``I want him to go to Chad, Africa, because its my friend's name,'' Jonathan Hunter says with a smile that reveals a missing tooth.
``I want him to go to Alaska and bring back a picture of a moose,'' Alex Mandzack says. ``Or a polar bear,'' a voice from the back adds.
Sheena Thurman, a cute, curly-haired girl, has some specific desires for Tommy. ``I want him to bring back a surfboard from Myrtle Beach, and I want him to surf on it,'' she whispers and later adds, ``I want him to bring back a baseball from Dallas signed by Babe Ruth.''
``I want him to go to Mars,'' Meredith Morgan declares.
``It would be nice if he could go to all the planets,'' says Adam Phillips.
Where is Tommy now?
``I assume the bear's doing well now. He's with a British Airways pilot and is going to go to Bermuda with a family on vacation,'' said Cheri Lawrence, a flight attendant for USAir. Lawrence, Clemmons' cousin, took Tommy on his first flight.
Tommy usually finds accommodations with flight attendants such as Lawrence.
``My whole crew had a blast with the bear. We took him out to dinner and to see `Phantom of the Opera,''' Lawrence adds with a laugh. He also has been known to sit with children flying alone who enjoy writing in his journal. The second-graders were excited when they learned Tommy had met two children from Sydney, Australia.
If you run into Tommy in the sky, be sure to write in his journal, and don't tell him about the surprise party the children have planned to celebrate his homecoming. It's doubtful that Tommy will return ``in an airplane that will land in front of the school'' as Sheena wishes. Instead, Clemmons hopes that when Tommy lands in Roanoke in April he will be escorted back to the classroom by Lawrence.
When their bear does set his paws back down on New River Valley soil, the children will total his air miles.
They are also excited about the souvenirs Tommy may bring them. Homer, a stuffed bear with a similar affinity for world travel, brought back a load of goodies for his fifth-grade friends in Springbrook Elementary in Irvine, Calif., in 1993. Among Homer's mementos were ``wooden shoes from Holland, Swiss chocolate, a pen with wood carvings from Bangladesh, a flask of sand from a Caribbean beach, a guidebook from Oman and a photo of a Sheraton hotel room where he had bunked in the United Arab Emirates,'' according to a Los Angeles Times report.
Closer to home, teddies have also traveled for fifth-graders at R.S. Payne Elementary school in Lynchburg. Fifty bears were sent out in November, one by each child. ``We just got thirty teddy bears back,'' said Charlene Crump, the school's librarian. ``The response has been absolutely overwhelming.''
The bears were taken by individuals who agreed to let a teddy tag along with them as they traveled. The travelers were asked to put a small souvenir in their bear's backpack. ``People went overboard,'' said Crump who told of a whole shopping bag full of goodies and an entire scrapbook coming back.
The bears have been to ``almost every state in the union'' and eleven countries, Crump said. The only problem, she added, is that ``people don't want to give them up.
There are more than lessons of geography and math, however, for the children to take from these bears' travels.
There is a small reassurance in the good of humanity, a comfort in thinking of strangers who stop and take time to write a few lines and snap a couple of pictures for a group of children they have never met. As Clemmons says with a smile, ``People have been so good.''
by CNB