A LETTER FROM "IGGY"

I’m just a rock...not big when compared to others. In fact, I barely move the scales at 68,000 pounds. 

Highly educated people say I’m from an igneous stratum with a granular orientation formed from the slow crystallization of the magma below the Earth’s surface, made up of quartz, feldspar, and trace levels of mica, amphiboles, and other minerals. 

But that’s not me my friends…I’m just a rock. Call me “Iggy”.

I started out thousands of years ago in a cold and frigid land, carried down in a mass of ice transporting me and millions like me south. When the ice melted, we literally dropped into this new topography now called home. Some of my friends are part of the land used to grow crops, others grow trees, and others are in the bottom of a lake growing fish.

Me? I’m one of the lucky ones…I grow children.

Now I don’t actually grow them…in reality I help them grow as people, as members of society, as future leaders, and most importantly as fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters. I provided a place for them to play, to run around, to feel safe. 

Yet they never knew I was there…but that’s OK…I knew every one of those young people by the way they moved, by their footsteps only a few feet above.

I remember the skipper…she never walked nor ran. She always skipped. Oh the joy she gave me each time I felt her feet hit my area! I felt the warmth of her smile and the joy in her heart every day, if only for a few short minutes, simply because she skipped. Kids around her would sometimes skip, and I can tell you her children are skippers…she couldn’t help but pass on that joy to others.

And there was the stomper…he seemed angry at times, never standing in a single location but constantly moving.  He had a cadence, or a rhythm in his step, and although I didn’t enjoy the stomper when he showed up, I was glad I was there to provide a place to stomp. As I thought about this, I’m really glad he was able to stomp on me. Maybe because he stomped on me, he didn’t stomp on others. 

I’ve had jumpers, leapers, crawlers, and many runners and walkers. I can tell you about each of the thousands that have enjoyed my place, tell you about the vibration they created with their actions, update you on the state of happiness or sadness, help you see the smile, or the tears, that covered their faces.

Yet I never viewed them…until recently.

A construction company found me when they were building a new school. Rooms that instruct and teach children needed to go where I was resting. What a great use of me, I thought! To be the foundation that sustains the education of these friends! I’d be ecstatic to exchange the skippers/stompers/runners for thinkers/readers/talkers. I could imagine the next hundred years supporting the development of their minds and being part of the education of these wonderful young people!

And as someone thousands of years old, perhaps it was time to limit the jumping taking place on top of me. After all, in rock years, I’m getting up there.

 In hindsight I’m glad that construction company didn’t ask my opinion on a resting place. Instead of covering me, they lifted me to the top, giving me a place of honor where I now see every one of my friends! Remember that skipper…she’s a little blond-haired, pig-tailed girl with a smile the size of the Rockies! And that stomper, I found out he enjoys music and dances everywhere he goes! And there’s the runner in blue jeans, the walker that loves to read books, the crawler that thrives in the same grass I now rest on, and the dreamer that sits on top of me in the warmth of the sun! These are my soul-mates, my brothers and sisters, friends that love me as much as I love them! Oh how I enjoyed these children while buried 15 feet down, but now I greet my friends every day, proudly proclaiming the new home of a school in my home town of Kendallville!

To be sure, I’m still one of the lucky ones. But thanks to that construction company, I’ll forever be where I’ve always been…now with the added blessing of seeing my friends!

Fetters Construction Inc. is proud to be the builder of the newly constructed East Noble Middle School in Kendallville, IN...and to bring the students "Iggy"!