Change one life, change the world

I wasn't even supposed to write about them.

I was asked to write about Kansas high school students who placed in the 2000 National History Day competition in Washington, D.C. Four girls from Uniontown High School flubbed so many lines that they didn't place in the competition.

But their play, "Life in a Jar," still turned heads. It was about Irena Sendler, a Catholic who led the efforts to save the lives of an estimated 2,500 children in Warsaw before she was captured by the Nazis in World War II. They were interviewed on CNN, and were invited to perform the play in New York for the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.

"A Catholic woman being discovered by Protestant kids who saved Jewish children," their history teacher, Norm Conard, would tell me later. "If this is not a story for the ages, I don't know what is."

I wrote a short piece about the schools that placed in the competition, but told my editors, "The real story is these kids from Uniontown." I talked them into letting me do a story on the students, who had discovered Sendler was still alive and based much of their play on her letters to them. The students were gracious to me, happy to tell Irena's story one more time. They admitted they were likely going to perform the play only a couple more times for family and friends, then tuck it away in their scrapbooks.

After my story ran, their phone began to ring with requests to see the play. Stories in the Kansas City Star and elsewhere brought even more requests. A performance of the play in Kansas City so inspired one man that he raised the money to send the cast, their teacher and family members to meet Irena in 2001. Their visit was national news in Poland, where Irena's efforts had been buried by a Communist regime that considered her subversive. When her work during the war became public, she became a national hero.

The original students who put together "Life in a Jar" have all graduated from college and are now married, but the play continues to be performed by Uniontown students. It's been performed more than 270 times in the U.S., Canada and Poland.

On Sunday night, "Life in a Jar" achieves another milestone: "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler," a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, will air on CBS. I'll be in Norman for a violent weather conference, so I won't be able to watch it. But I've got my VCR programmed, and I'll be eager to see it upon my return.

I'm so proud of those students and their teacher, and by how deeply Irena's story has touched the tens of thousands of people who have seen "Life in a Jar."

Sadly, Irena didn't live to witness this latest milestone. She died last May 12 in Warsaw at the age of 98.

Only days before her death, she was visited by her beloved Uniontown students one last time. She told them, “You have changed Poland, you have changed the United States, you have changed the world. I love you very, very much."

Anyone who thinks one person can't make a difference in the world needs merely to read about Irena Sendler...and a few students from Uniontown.