Paul Trapani helps his son Cameron Trapani, grandson of late Coach John Wooden, practice bowling for the upcoming Nell and John Wooden Friendship Olympics at Lull Special Education Center in Encino, Wednesday, May 25, 2011. (Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer)
Evan Johnson wanted to leave that first day his class at John R. Wooden Continuation High School in Reseda visited the special needs students at Lull Special Education Center in Encino last year, but he couldn't.
The famous voice in the back of his head wouldn't let him go.
"Don't let what you can't do interfere with what you can do," Coach John Wooden was telling him.
Don't be ruled by your fear, by your insecurities. You can do this, coach was saying.
"I had started to cry," says Johnson, now 22, who's going to college to become a special education teacher.
"The student I was with was my age then, 20, but less than half my size. I was overwhelmed. I just wanted to leave."
But he stayed, and became the boy's coach and friend.
How many times had Johnson heard his teacher Paul Trapani quote Coach Wooden - Trapani's grandfather-in-law - with sayings that made you stop and think.
You couldn't ignore them. They made too much sense. Made you look at things in a whole new way. And now the man who inspired millions of people to be better was doing it again with students in a continuation school named after him.
"Spending time with the kids at Lull changed everything about me," says Lacey Reynolds, 17, a senior at Wooden's school.
"This is
what I want to do with my life, work with people who need my help."Trapani smiles. He could just imagine his late grandfather-in-law hearing those words.
"Papa would have smiled and said, `See, Paul, give kids a chance, teach them right from wrong, and they'll do the right thing."'
This Friday, you're going to see a lot of the right thing at the first Nell and John Wooden Friendship Olympics taking place at Lull Special Education Center.
Wooden's great-grandson, 17-year-old Cameron Trapani, is a special needs student at Lull. His mom, Cathleen, is Wooden's granddaughter.
This idea of bringing students from the neighborhood continuation high school together with students in the local special ed school to learn from each other has proved to be a huge success.
The students from both schools have learned a lot of the lessons Coach Wooden taught, say Jason Garrison, principal at Wooden High, and Leslie Zarate-Wise, principal at Lull.
Continuation high school students are those, for the most part, who have made bad choices that got them taken out of regular high school.
Working with the severely disabled students at Lull - kids who really have had no choices in life - has made a big difference in his students, Trapani says.
"It's made them so much more sensitive and aware of others' needs, and made them more gentle and appreciative," he says.
"With Papa, it was not about being better than somebody else, but being the best person you could be."
A year after his death at age 99, the famous voice in the back of so many of our heads is still making too much sense to ever ignore.
Opening ceremonies Friday for the Nell and John Wooden Friendship Games will begin at 9:30 a.m. on the playground at Lull school, 17551 Miranda St. in Encino.
Bring a beach chair and cheer some great kids on.
Dennis McCarthy's column appears on the Los Angeles Daily News on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. You may reach him via email at dennis.mccarthy@dailynews.com.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18185428?source=rss
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