Dear Norwich

Thank you for the leadership of the Corps of Cadets, Cadre, and Regimental Staff thus far. Please also thank your staff and the Cadre. I do not doubt that the sacrifices you make as student leaders are significant. I am writing to thank you for the difference each of you made for my son. On behalf of our family, I am incredibly grateful.

The Corps and Cadre created the opportunity for the noise and excuses of my son’s life to fall away so he could truly see who he is and what he is capable of – I suspect that is the same for all the Rooks. The Cadre that worked most closely with him executed the Norwich vision in an inspiring way; they brought leadership, creativity, and energy to everything they did. The last few months were a life-changing opportunity. I hope you all understand how truly special it is.

When he was little, my son was among the most effervescent, busy little boys I’ve ever known. A few days after starting kindergarten, he came home from school and said, “School isn’t a place for boys like me.” As an educator, it broke my heart. In a way, he was right – but he wasn’t the issue – school was the issue. He didn’t want to learn about rocks and trees inside the walls of a school; he wanted to be outside, among the rocks and trees. We got through the early school years; he lived for recess, sports, breaks, and summer.

During the winter of 2016, it was clear that he wasn’t feeling well. Several doctors told me that he was fine, then that he had a concussion, and finally, on May 18, 2016, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. When the doctor called, I was told to pick him up from school and drive him directly to the hospital. He wouldn’t leave for six weeks. That first night, as I lay in his hospital bed with him, he asked me how we would get through this. I said the only thing I could think of: one thing, one day at a time.

Doctors were clear that the odds of his survival were not great. His best chance would come from a bone marrow transplant if we could find a match for him. We needed first to rid his body of cancer, so he lived at the hospital six weeks at a time with a lengthy chemo regimen each time; after days of chemo, they monitored him for necessary blood transfusions and to treat whatever infection his body couldn’t fight. We were unbelievably relieved when a donor was identified, a 29-year-old man from the Netherlands. This was his chance.  

The days, weeks, months, and now years that have followed his transplant have been full of incredible joy and fraught with worry. Once you have seen your child in the liminal space between life and death, once you have seen other parents bury their children who had the same disease your child did, things are different. His dad and I tried to let things be normal, but nothing was ever quite normal. Suleika Jaouad, an author and a leukemia patient, describes it as living between two kingdoms – neither entirely healthy nor entirely sick. He has lived between these two kingdoms for years.

His lungs took the brunt of the collateral damage of his chemo; even now, he has limited lung capacity and is prone to pneumonia. Sports were no longer a reality, he worried his peers saw him as “the kid with cancer,” and his world was much smaller than it had been before he was sick. He lived, but he wasn’t living.  

Fast forward to the fall of 2022. He was reluctant to engage in a meaningful college search. With a heavy push, we created a list of schools, including Norwich, for him to look at. He was not all that interested in looking at them. Finally, in November, I suggested we go look at Norwich. It couldn’t have been a worse day for a tour – frigid, windy, and icy. The campus was empty. I wondered how to help him understand it was a perfect fit for him – just the right size, majors I knew he would love. I believed he would make a great civilian student there, provided he liked it. On the way home, he was excited for the first time in a long time. He loved it. He loved everything about it and wanted to be in the Corps of Cadets.  

In full transparency, there wasn’t a single cell in my body that wanted him to pursue an opportunity in the Corps of Cadets. It wasn’t anything to do with the Corps, per se. It was that I didn’t want him to feel the sting of limitation or rejection again. I was terrified that his lungs, his body, atrophied from years of being sedentary, couldn’t do it. I insisted that he needed clearance from his oncology team before we could even entertain the idea, thinking doctors would save him from having to face the possibility of failure.

He worked to get the clearance, but it came with an asterisk. You can do this, they said, as long as you let them know there are things you might not be able to do, things you can’t do. I was now more terrified than before. That isn’t how the Corps works, I told him. He said he would sort it out. He wanted to try. His dad’s blessing was much easier to win than mine. Ultimately, I told him this was his choice. If he were to be a Rook, I would be the best Rook mom I could be. This was his journey – and I would figure out how to support it.

At some point in August, something clicked in my mind. He had no choice in having cancer. Yes, he got through it – but even now, he’ll say he just laid there. He’ll say that the doctors, nurses, and his bone marrow donor did all the hard work. He wanted to choose a hard journey and prove he could see it through.

On August 20, 2023, we dropped off a boy who had pretty good “excuses” about why he might not make it to recognition. He’d had cancer, he was incredibly out of shape, we’d let him quit when things got hard because life had been hard enough, and the list went on. I’m not proud of my role in that – but – there’s no manual for parenting and certainly no additional chapter about parenting and life-threatening illnesses. He didn’t want people at Norwich to know he’d been sick, so we only shared it with folks in the Health Center. My son wanted a fresh start. He wanted to be just like everyone else.

And he was.

Unlike the first time he was bald, this time, it didn't give anyone pause. Others were nearly bald, too. The physical tasks that were hard for him were also hard for many others. He didn’t stand out for what he couldn’t do, instead he worked alongside others to try and keep trying. The kid who wanted to learn about rocks and trees by being outside, the kid that school wasn’t meant for was now a man, finally learning the way he hoped to from the start. He wasn’t learning about leadership by reading a book; he was watching it in action, learning it by living it. He learned about teamwork by being a part of a team. I know that this is just the beginning of his true education.

Last week, when he was home, I asked how he got through the first few months of this experience – especially in the early days when the Sunday calls were full of tears – his and mine. He said, “One thing, one day at a time, Mum. When it was awful, I just thought about the next thing I could get to. Sometimes, the only thing I could think was: ‘I just have to make it to breakfast.’"

Thank you for teaching my son the true meaning of Essayons. He couldn’t have learned and understood it without you and those you lead. He will, no doubt, continue to try.  

Norwich together, Norwich forever.