Of course, scanning in old publications comes at a cost, so searching Newspapers.com is not free. For $80 a year is it well worth the expense. My friend Audrey turned me onto the site. To demonstrate how much information it contained, she searched my name - Kim Cronin.
Now we all have those moments that we remember from our past. As you re-tell the memories, things may change and you start to wonder if it was really like you remember.
One of those pivotal moments for me was my sophomore year of high school. I was a nerdy kid and struggled to fit in. I even switched high schools between my Freshman and Sophomore year because I was bullied so badly at Wellsville High School.
A new student at Scio Central school, I was trying to fit in. After being cut from the girls' basketball team in the fall, I decided to try track in the spring. I didn't do that good in any of the races the coach put me in, so I ended up in the two mile run. My first time running the two mile was at a track meet at Alfred-Almond High School. Their track was in the front yard of the school.
The two mile run is eight laps around the track. We had a team superstar, Mary Root, who won any distance race you put her in. So when the race started, Mary took off in the lead. I was just another runner in the pack and another sports superstar, Ellen Ann Coughlin was in second place. Her dad was a coach at our school and Ellen Ann excelled at any sport she tried.
So I just kept running with the pack doing loop after loop in the race. At around the 5th time around the track, as I ran by teammates Lynn and Jeanette, they started encouraging me..."Kim, you aren't even breathing hard..everyone ahead of you is struggling..run faster...you can do it".
I still remember their encouragement and I realized that maybe I was better than I thought and I could do it. So I picked up the pace and ran harder.
I passed Ellen Ann. She was a superstar and I didn't think I was good enough to pass her, but I did. Newspapers.com stored that memory for me:
Reading it... it all came flooding back, my lack of confidence and how that day I realized to believe in yourself, that you have to try harder. It is still one of my favorite memories from High School, being told by my teammates that I could...that I should try harder. And then believing in myself that I could.
Thanks newspapers.com for storing that memory for me. It's a good one!!
