An Interview with a Good Samaritan
I had the chance to meet up with Monica Coursey for an interview. She's heading up the softball benefit for Ethan Gass. She's such a friendly and great person. I hope this interview will inspire people to become active in helping others.
Sean: First tell me a little bit about yourself.
Monica: I live in White Bluff. I'm a special education teacher at White Bluff Elementary. I've been there for two years. I have two little girls. That's basically me in a nut shell.
S: So you're used to dealing with kids with special needs?
M: Yeah. I work with autistic children, and I love it. It's great.
S: Does it take a lot of training to do that?
M: I've done a lot of outside training, just to be more comfortable and better equipped to handle the kids. But it's not a lot.
S: So how do you know Ethan (Gass)?
M: His big sister was in my younger daughter's class last year. They became best friends and we found out they live right behind us. So they just started being together every afternoon after school. Macey comes home with us. And then pretty much every Friday Analeigh and Emma go home and spend the night with Macey. So that's how we really got to know them.
S: So you and the family are pretty close…
M: Yes, extremely close.
S: What is exactly going on with Ethan?
M: In June he was kept saying his legs were “crankin'”, and he meant cramping. And so they took him in. The doctor was like, “Oh, it's probably growth.” His iron was a little low. They checked his iron and put him on an iron supplement. Two weeks later, he went back. His iron levels were still down, so then they ran the blood test and it came back as leukemia. It's a very fast progressing one. He had to go in the very next day to start a treatment. He stayed for a week and a half at Vanderbilt. He has to go once a week every week for the next three years to get treatments because it is such a quickly progressing condition. However, seven years ago there was only a 30 percent survival rate for kids and now there's 85 percent.
S: That's awesome. What exactly is his treatment?
M: I'm not 100% for sure on it. I know he does radiation chemo therapy, and he has begun loosing his hair. He has to have steroid treatment. So his little face and body is kind of puffing up and it makes him extremely tired. He can't go back to preschool that he had been going to because of infection. They're not for sure about whether he'll get to start kindergarten next year on time. You know, it depends on how the treatments go. His dad was so looking forward for to start t-ball for this spring. Now that's kind of in the air.
S: How is his family doing?
M: They're great. They are, you know… They keep a good faith on it. They're awesome people. They're incredible. The really are. Their house is always really full with other kids. They're the kind of people who, every weekend, have their kids, their brother's and sister's kids. My kids. (laughs) They're like the cool house to go hang out at.
S: OK, so you are throwing that softball benefit for him. How did you guys come up with this idea?
[img_assist|nid=1007|title=Ethan and Sister, Macey|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=244|height=250]M: My husband plays softball and we were trying to think of something with it being a little boy. Something that he would enjoy going to. My husband knows that at a lot of tournaments they charge a 150 to 200 dollars entry fee per team. Why not? We're really big in the little league. My girls play tee ball down here in Dickson County, so we know it's a big thing here. It's an extremely big thing. So we were thinking, “why not?” It's not your typical benefit. It's not your bake sale. It's not your standing out at the red collecting money thing. It's something that's fun and enjoying the moment. We will have him throwing out the first little pitch and everything. This is something that he really will love, and we think it is something other people will love. So that's kind of how we came up with it. We just wanted to do something that would help them. It's like you feel so helpless when it's someone close to you. You hear about children with leukemia all the time. But then when you actually hear the voice of a parent who is telling you, “Hey, I found out that my child has this” it just takes the air out of you. I can only say, “Oh gosh, I'm sorry” so many times. You feel like you want to do something.
S: Well you're doing something.
M: Exactly. When your kid is sick, you shouldn't have to worry about money. It's the last thing they should ever have to worry about. They've never mentioned the strain, but they are having to miss work and just everything else with it. So we said, “We have to do something.” And that's what we came up with.
S: It's a great idea.
M: Thank you.
S: Can you tell me some of the details of the event? How much does it cost for the teams to sign up?
M: It's 200 dollars for the teams' entry fee. We're not having to pay for the park; they're not charging us for the use of the park at all. So that's been wonderful. When I contacted the Chamber of Commerce, everyone over there was so wonderful.
S: The Chamber of Commerce, they're awesome.
M: They're very good people. And so, it's at Tennsco Park. It's going to be the 23rd of August. We're going to start around 9:00 a.m.. It's a double elimination tournament. So every team, no matter how good or bad, is going play at least twice. Actually Ethan's dad and his buddies at work are getting a team together. They don't pay softball either. They're going to have fun. They're going to get out there and do it. It doesn't require skill. We're only doing men's right now because we figure there are more men's teams and the men's league is the largest. We might do a coed one, and we might even do a little league later on. We'll see how this one goes.
S: So you are planning in future have more benefits.
M: Hopefully. I'm hoping to.
S: I hope so too. I think it's a really good idea.
M: I really do. I really want to go with it, do a little more. You know, run with it.
S: Especially for three years of treatment.
M: .. At Vanderbilt.
S: Is there any admission for the audience?
M: No, we wanted many people to come out and watch.
S: Can you make a donation?
M: Yeah, you can donate if you want to. There's a vendor who does a shaved ice, called Chill Out. She has volunteered to come down, if they let her She has to worry about the permits. She would give out little carnival tickets. Like a dollar per ticket. You just bring the ticket and you get a shaved ice and maybe a few things like that. Maybe seeing if they will let us put up one of those big inflatable jump houses or something and do the same thing with the tickets. Buy five tickets and go to the jump house, go here. Five dollars for five tickets. Something like that. I'm going to try to compete with the state fair. (laughs)
By the time I get done we'll have pony rides and greased pigs competitions. (continued laughter). You never know with me.
S: how many teams have signed up so far?
M: So far we've just opened it up on softballwire.com, where people can go and sign up. We've had about eight teams contact us. But we haven't actually started doing the registration just yet. We're still checking on doing online registration. We may even let people register the day of the event. That might be just as easy. We're kind of flying with it by the seat of our pants right now. This part has been the hardest part, trying to figure out when to get everybody registered and when to get the registration fee and how to set that up. We're hoping to set up an account with one of the local banks for Ethan and then deposit directly into that.
S: Do you guys have a goal?
M: We don't. If we can make $600, we're happy. Anything to go toward helping them. We really just want for them to see that we all care what they are going through. Really to show them the support emotionally and let the see that the community does care. Because that's what Dickson County is about. They say your neighbor is your friend.
S: You're trying to prove it.
M: Yes, exactly. And it's not like this if you live in a bigger part of town or a bigger town, nobody would care. If you called a park and said, “Hey could you donate a field?” They might say, “No we won't”, you know.
S: Dickson County still home town enough..
M: Exactly. We're growing but we still have our roots.
S: Now have you ever done anything like this?
M: Never. I've never done anything like this before.
S: You're doing a good job, and you're planning to do it again hopefully.
M: Thank you. Hopefully. I want to. The closest thing like this was girl scout cookies.
S: One last question. What was the hardest, or biggest challenge of this whole thing?
M: Getting it all out there to people and trying to gather all the information. It really hasn't been that hard. Everybody I've spoken to has been just incredible. They've gotten back to me quickly. It's been a great response. We've had no difficulty with people responding. I guess the hardest part now is to waiting to see how many teams we get and waiting for the day of it.
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Softball Benefit Tornament Information
