This morning at 5:30 AM, we were awakened by a phone call. It was a teacher from the school our kids attend-- Caldwell Academy. She advised that school was being cancelled today because a student from the school had been severely injured in a motor vehicle accident, and was medically unstable.
Forty-five minutes later, another teacher called. The young man, Clete Childs, had passed away.
Enormous grief enveloped the Caldwell community today as we learned more about the events of the previous evening. He had apparently been driving home after basketball practice and was struck by a drunk driver. He was taken to the trauma center at Baptist in Winston-Salem.
Clete was a junior in our Rhetoric School (Caldwell's term for high school). My family did not know this young man. But this was one of those instances in which the intersection of the various communities that we share can have such impact.
What added to our grief is the fact that Clete's dad is the pastor of Friendly Hills Presbyterian Church. I had the privilege of meeting Craig Childs on a couple of occasions during seminars at his church. This is a church that has helped strengthen the local Christian community beyond its own walls with its strong spiritual and intellectual tradition. My son had the opportunity to take a summer retreat with its youth group last summer.
Caldwell Academy is, in fact, heavily populated with families, staff and board members that come from several like-minded Presbyterian churches in Greensboro, many of whom helped organize and provide the vision and backbone for our school. Being at Caldwell has helped us connect with some of these folks, to our extraordinary benefit.
One member at Friendly Hills Presbyterian is the principal of our upper grades at Caldwell. He spent the entire time overnight at Baptist Hospital with his pastor and in close proximity to his dying student.
And Clete's contemporaries from the upper grades also pulled an all-nighter-- a prolonged prayer session together at the home of one of the students. They gathered at the school later today in memory of Clete even though it was technically closed.
And it was teachers-- yes, the teachers-- who called the school's parents early this morning before dawn, conveying the tragic news, and establishing a tone of reverence for the time that would follow. I was very proud of Caldwell today.
The injustice-- the utter unfairness-- of last night's events is not lost upon this community. It was a sobering reminder of every parent's nightmare. Clete's death speaks to us the transitory nature of our own existence. We are, in fact, merely dust even as we inflate the significance of our momentary circumstances.
But our confidence is in our belief that Clete's journey will take him to a special place-- a place of magnified delights and pleasures; of spectacular experiences and relationships; of unalloyed fulfillment; and of the unspeakable, awesome joy of seeing and being with God.
We are grateful for all that the Childs family and its larger church family have contributed locally, and what they have meant to us; and offer our deepest condolences in this hour of loss.
Comments