The children of Player Development, who are in the Rotary Mid Isle Early Act Service Club, have decided their international project will be to help restore the Cab to working order. Rotary requires both local and international projects. For their local endeavour, the children collect pop tops for wheel chairs. Thus far, they have helped bring 19 chairs to the island.
Once upon a time, there was a nice gentleman named Conductor Steve. Mr. Steve was visiting St. Maarten from his home in New York. When Conductor Steve and his wife are on St. Maarten for vacation, they help feed stray dogs and sometimes they even help the dogs find new homes.
Conductor Steve heard that the Little League's Player Development after-school group, which combines reading, writing, math and anger management with baseball, didn’t have any practice uniforms. Even though Conductor Steve had never met any of the children; that did not matter to him; he dropped off new uniforms.
Conductor Steve visited with the children and told them that he is a volunteer fire fighter back at home. He has even been the Fire Chief. He noticed that the children liked reading Thomas the Tank Engine books, and so he told them that he works on a real train in New York and even volunteers at a train museum.
Once Conductor Steve went back home, he started writing to the children almost every day and sending photos of his trains. The children wrote back and asked him questions about his trains.
All the children, including me, were inspired by Conductor Steve's generosity and support of the island. But the story doesn’t end there: The children were so happy and excited to be learning so much about trains. In one letter, Conductor Steve told all about the train museum he helped to start. He told them that the museum featured an old Steam Engine, Number 35.
It was the last steam engine to ever run in New York. The museum wanted to restore Number 35 to its old glory, but they had run out of money for the project. The children learned that Conductor Steve worried he might never be able to save the No 35 steam engine. This is where the story takes an unexpected twist.
Player Development is a member of St. Maarten Mid Isle Rotary Club's Early Act Group. As a service club, we have to do local and international projects. For our local service, we collect pop top tabs and send them up north to get wheel chairs. We have helped bring 19 wheel chairs to St. Maarten. We also run a clothing distribution centre for the needy. This is located right at the Little League Stadium.
For our international project, we all voted to help our Conductor Steve: “Save Engine 35.” He needs your help too. His steam engine can't be restored until the museum gets help from donors.
Player Development hopes this and the other stories and videos we are posting on our Player Development SXM Facebook page will inspire other people to support Conductor Steve in his endeavours to preserve history much like Conductor Steve has shown his support for St. Maarten.
We are all competing to tell stories about old No 35, and you can vote on which story you like the best. This helps us with our writing skills, but also helps Conductor Steve's museum.
Visit the museum's website at www.obrm.org. Make a donation of as little as $5 and then go to our Facebook page and vote for your favourite story. (I hope you pick this story as the best). Winning stories win a prize.
