Letterman jacket program started for special-needs students

VINCENNES, Ind. (AP) - Officials at the Vincennes Community School Corp. are expecting greatness from senior Lena Stephens.

"I love to see a student who can see beyond their own vantage point," said Erika Shepard, a counselor at Lincoln High School, with a wide, proud smile. "If more students were like Lena, the world would be a better place.

"I get teary just thinking about it," she said laughing and fanning her tear-filled eyes.

Stephens is this year's recipient of the Good "IDEA" Award, an honor dedicated to the memory of former VCSC special needs student Mickey Kimberly. It recognizes someone each year for going above and beyond in serving students in the county's special education program.

But Stephens is the first student to receive it.

And it all started with a simple jacket.

When Stephens two years ago saw some special needs students making a fuss over her green-and-tan LHS letterman's jacket during a rather chilly track meet, she felt a tug at her heart strings. Wouldn't be nice, she thought, if they could all have one of their own?

"It was cold, and I guess they were taking turns trying it on," Stephens recalled with a grin. "And then the next day, my mom and I saw an old letterman's jacket on one of those online yard sales.

"I thought, 'Oh, I could actually make this happen.'"

And make it happen, she did.

She began scouring social media sites and alum's closets for unused letterman's jackets. She gathered six last year and another six this year to hand out to those students on the high school's unified track team, a group of special needs students who practice and sometimes compete against regular athletes.

Each year, those students on the unified track team - coached by Stephens' father, Darrell Stephens - collect a varsity letter but no jacket, and while a few could afford to buy one, not everyone could

That is, until last year.

"But everybody who participated last year (in the unified track team) got a jacket," Stephens said proudly. "It was amazing. One kid cried. That was really heart-warming.

"Another said he looked like Michael Jackson," she said with a chuckle. "It was just really great, to see them get something they never would have gotten before or had the chance to get.

"Their faces lit up, and it made me happy to see them so happy."

But the program is just an extension of who Stephens is.

Living and working alongside special needs students and adults is a way of life. She helped her dad coach Special Olympics as a child, and she is the youngest to ever receive KCARC's Volunteer of the Year Award. She was just six at the time.

She also helps provide respite care for adults with mental disabilities.

"She is very deserving," Sheryl Shaefer-Jones, director of Knox County Special Education Cooperative, told school board members this week. "We're proud of her, and very honored to have her.

"She definitely meets that idea of creativeness and making students feel like they're a part of their school."

Shepard, too, said Stephens' program was giving those special needs students a true high school experience, something many of those who came before them never had.

"She is giving these students an opportunity succeed where they normally would not," Shepard said matter-of-factly. "She is stepping outside her own comfort zone not just to serve others but to bring an underserved population up to where they feel equal to their peers.

"And that's really special."

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Source: Vincennes Sun-Commercial, http://bit.ly/2mf8uXV

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Information from: Vincennes Sun-Commercial, http://www.vincennes.com