ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 TAG: 9604300056
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
I can remember my first trip out of state more clearly than I remember high school graduation, with more significance than my first kiss, and with greater awe and wonder than my first airpane ride.
The year was 1977, the chartered bus was hot and crowded. And Randy Henson, the object of my seventh-grade desires, was like, way too cool.
The class field trip to Washington was my first time away from my parents, my first hotel overnight, even my first experience with a stand-up shower.
The mental pictures are sharper now than the old fuzzy Polaroids from the trip.
It's that way when you're a 10-year-old who's never ridden further than across town, never ordered from a waiter in a restaurant, never been on a family vacation.
Joyce Goodwin knows all that. A fourth-grade teacher at Fallon Park Elementary, she knows how important it is for children to see the world beyond their own neighborhoods.
"A lot of our students have never been out of Roanoke. For some of them, Boones Mill is a really big trip," she says. "And going to Williamsburg is really the chance of a lifetime."
At precisely 6:15 on Thursday morning, 51 kids will wipe the sleep from their eyes and step onto a chartered bus headed for Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown. They will spend the night in a motel, order food from menus and walk among period-costumed Colonial Virginians.
There was no doubt in the teachers' minds that the trip would be a fitting end to a year spent studying Virginia history, not to mention an important event in the kids' personal growth.
The only question: How would they raise the $8,000 necessary to take the entire fourth grade?
As recently as last week, they weren't sure.
A spaghetti dinner at the school had brought in $270. Teacher Evelyn Danner helped raise over $900 with a chile relleno dinner at the Unitarian Universalist Church.
Some teachers made private donations, and each member of the school's staff pitched in a dollar toward the scholarship fund - for the privilege of wearing jeans one Friday. The kids themselves sold Easter candy. Parents pitched in what they could, but only two students were able to pay for the trip with their own families' funds.
When it was announced last week that the school was still $1,300 short, teaching assistant Linda Garbee went home and called all the doctors, lawyers and business people she and her accountant-husband knew.
"No one even hesitated," Garbee recalls. "They just said, 'Who do I write the check to?' They brought the money over to my house that night."
In interviews late last week, the students were grateful, giddy and a little bit nervous.
Asked what she pictured Williamsburg to be like, 9-year-old Heather Hight said: "Probably dirt roads and old buildings and some pictures of old people."
Since this is her first big trip out of Roanoke, she confessed, "I'm a little scared I'll get lost." But she couldn't wait to see Pocahontas's grave at Jamestown - she's a big fan of the Disney movie.
Jacklyn Howell was so excited she had a hard time sitting in her chair. Her best friend, Vicky Green, was already tired: "I'm scared I'm gonna oversleep and miss the bus, so I'm practicing getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning all this week," she said, giggling. "This morning I was like, I wanna go back to bed."
Best friends April Dooley and Amanda Snead also shared a few concerns: "I'm worried we're not gonna get to share a room together, and about bad weather, and about getting lost," April said.
This is the first time the fourth grade has gone on a two-day overnight trip. And though it took more than a little begging and finagling to pull it off, Joyce Goodwin is already planning to do it again next year. The Mary Brown Scholarship Fund, named in honor of a teacher's aide who died this year, was established to help fund future field trips at the school.
Joyce is thinking, too, about designing a payment-coupon book on her home computer this summer so students can begin paying for the trip in installments earlier in the school year.
She knows that a journey into the distant past might do a lot for their not-too-distant futures.
Many students still need spending money for the trip; to contribute, checks written to the Fallon Park PTA can be dropped off at the school, 502 19th St., S.E., Roanoke. To contribute to the Mary Brown Scholarship Fund for future field trips, checks should be addressed to Fallon Park Elementary. Call the school at 981-2535 for more information.
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