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Young Essay Winners Ride Off on New Bikes

Posted on: Sunday, 25 June 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Maria Herrera, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Jun. 25--She wanted to get to the library. So 10-year-old Diana Rodriguez poured her heart into an essay, putting her wish into words, page after page: a bike, if she only had a bike.

"She reworked her essay three or four times," Forest Park Elementary teacher Elizabeth Lustig said of Rodriguez's essay. "She would not give up. She was determined to get a bike."

Saturday, her work paid off. Rodriguez was one of 50 children who received new bicycles, thanks to the Boynton Beach Rotary Club. Her gleaming, hot pink two-wheeler read "Dream Journey" on the side.

The bicycle give-away was part of a program in which children wrote essays describing why they needed a bike and how they would use it.

"I could ride it around the neighborhood, go to the library and get a card. I like chapter books," Rodriguez said as she slurped a pink smoothie through a straw. "The two bikes I had before were stolen."

Art and Mark House, a father-and-son team, started the program nearly 10 years ago, said Boynton Beach Rotary Club president Todd Schuart.

More than 100 Title I public schools offered the essay contest to children from second to ninth grade. Title I schools receive federal funds to increase academic performance among economically disadvantaged students and boost parental involvement.

"A lot of the essays were tearjerkers," said Palm Beach County school district representative Jacqueline Taylor-Wilson. "Many children said they needed the bikes to run errands or buy groceries for their grandparents. They were all very selfless."

The contest winners came a few at a time to claim their prizes from the lines of bicycles neatly arranged in the parking lot of Jumpin Juice and Java in Boynton Beach. As they arrived, Rotary Club members tried to fit the winners to the correct size bike, choosing small ones with training wheels and Spiderman and Superman logos on the handlebars, lilac and pink ones sprinkled with flower designs, and even a few bigger mountain bikes.

A letter delivered in the mail on bright green paper notified authors to pick up the bicycles nearly three months after submitting their essays.

"She had forgotten about writing the essay earlier this year," Veronica Fischer said about her 9-year-old daughter, Taylor. "She was so excited. She really wanted a bike."

Taylor Fischer stood watching as another winner rode a shiny new blue, green and gray mountain bike around in circles. Then she jumped on a pink one and pedaled after him.

"I said I would ride my bike to my grandma's house who lives two streets over from me," the third-grader at Meadow Elementary in West Palm Beach said. "Bikes cost a lot of money and mine was rusty, the chain broke and it was too small for me."

Others, like Marquise Rosier, a fifth-grader at Plumosa Elementary, wanted to make life easier for his uncle, who drives him around Delray Beach.

Rosier said he would use his bike to ride to the park with his cousins and run errands when he needs to. The essay, he said, made him work hard.

"I even had to use the dictionary for one word," he said.

Maria Herrera can be reached at meherrera@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6544.

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Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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