 |
A message for us all at
Easter…
Townhall...
Caring Enough to
Broadcast the Very Best
By Cal Thomas
Growing up, “Hallmark Hall of Fame” represented the gold standard of
what we would call today “family values” television, except that TV
then rarely carried anything threatening to those values. Today,
Hallmark’s commitment to quality television hasn’t change; it even has
its own cable channel, which shows films that affirm the values most of
us hold dear.
This Easter Sunday, CBS will mark the 60th anniversary of the “Hallmark
Hall of Fame” with a film called “Beyond the Blackboard.” It’s one of
those “based on a true story” projects about a young woman (Stacey
Bess) who desperately wants to teach, but finds there are no jobs
available in her Salt Lake City school district. There is, however, an
experimental program and Bess (played by Emily VanCamp), eagerly
accepts the job. There’s a problem, though. She is to teach homeless
children in a rundown warehouse.
Stacey shows up for her first day of work wearing pumps and carrying a
leather briefcase and gets a fast reality check.
Based on Bess’ memoir, “Nobody Don’t Love Nobody,” the film could
easily veer off into a political diatribe and a call for more
government spending on education. It is a tribute to the restraint of
the creators that it does not. What it does depict is the power of one
person to make a difference in other people’s lives, not with
government funds, but with the currency of a loving and dedicated heart.
This storyline originally put me off. It is drenched in estrogen and
Stacey’s husband Greg, played by Steve Talley, seems largely passive,
even irrelevant, except that he keeps getting her pregnant. But the
more I thought about it the more I realized that “wholesome TV” takes
some getting used to. The mind must purge itself of the sexual and the
tawdry to make room for the good.
In an interview on the “Blackboard” set in Albuquerque, the real Stacey
Bess recalls her first day with the homeless children: “The gentleman
who greeted me at the shelter looked me up and down and all his body
language was saying, ‘You don’t belong here. This isn’t gonna work
out.’ And the truth is, the chance of my surviving at the beginning
were just about nil. I mean, I’d never been exposed to poverty.”
Stacey Bess is no “do-gooder,” who comes to a place she might never
knowingly want to visit and then leaves after a few days. This is
commitment. This is real. This matters, because she has mattered in the
lives of others.
“What’s the bottom line take away from this story?” she is asked.
“I think the Number One thing that Greg (her husband) and I have truly
learned is step out of your comfort zone, reach out to people, you
don’t have to be sophisticated to love somebody, you don’t have to have
grand skills, you don’t have to have a degree, you just have to want to
care just a little bit further than what’s expected. We’re not
exceptional people. ... I just happened to have an opportunity to help
some young people, and I just happened to have a husband and children
who supported me -- and really, we did it together.”
That attitude has inspired “Hallmark Hall of Fame” for 60 years. One
hopes that in our cynical and hyper-politicized age, it will last for
another 60.
Read it at Townhall
|
