February has a way of stirring old memories – especially in West Texas, where snow was rare and gone too soon. For me, one snowy day in 1967 turned into more than a school assignment. It became the beginning of a lesson that lasted nearly sixty years.
I was six years old, in Mrs. Bobbie Andrews’ first-grade class at Colonial Heights Elementary in Brownfield. It was our family’s first full year in town. My mother, Scottie, was teaching at Wheatley, a school that would close just two years later, sending its students to Colonial Heights and Oak Grove. Brownfield was a small town with only three elementary schools, then two, where the teachers all knew one another by their first names, and where I was trying to find my place after living in three towns in three years.
That February day, the air was sharp and cold. Snow had fallen – maybe our only snow of the year, maybe the last. Mrs. Andrews gave us an assignment: write about how the snow made us feel. At six, feelings aren’t complicated. We know joy, and we know sadness. I pulled out my Big Chief tablet, gripped my fat pencil, and started writing. Because I was the son of a teacher, my printing was neat, but the real difference was that I didn’t stop.
I filled three or four full pages. I wrote about the joy of seeing snow, the fun of playing in it, and then the sadness that came when it melted away. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was mine.
Mrs. Andrews thought enough of it to ask me to read it aloud to the other first-grade classes. Then, even more memorably, she let me read it to the second graders. When you’re six, that’s a big deal. Standing there, telling my story, I got my first taste of writing-and of what I would later recognize as performing.
The mind lets some memories fade, but others never leave. That snowy February reading has stayed with me for decades. But the real story happened after reading.
I was a talker, the kind of boy who sat in the front row to be kept in check. Afterward, Mrs. Andrews leaned close and said something that might seem small to most but meant the world to me. “Stanley, this is very good! I’m going to send this to your mother. She’ll appreciate it.”
Not amazing, not fantastic. Just direct, kind, and matter-of-fact. And she followed through. She sent my story home with a note written in the most beautiful cursive I had ever seen – so graceful that I can still picture it today.
It read:
Scottie, I knew you would want these. I am so proud of Stanley. He did them all by himself. Maybe he will be a writer and make us all rich.
That was it. No signature. No hearts or candy. Just a short, wonderful note of encouragement.
And that was all my mother needed. For the next eleven years, while we lived at 1206 South Pecos, Scottie brought up that note at least once or twice a year. Sometimes she’d say, “Remember to make Mrs. Andrews proud.” Sometimes, “You’re a writer,” Most often, she’d laugh and say, “Make us rich.”
The older I got, the funnier the line became. But the message never left. Every time she mentioned the Snow Story, I heard the same call: make your mother proud, honor Mrs. Andrews’ kindness, don’t waste your gift.
Mothers have a way of keeping their sons humble, too. Years later, when I bragged about my “first speaking engagement,” Scottie would smile and say, “Settle down. It was too cold to go outside, so Mrs. Andrews had to think of something for you to do.” Then she’d leave the room before I could fire back.
There’s another piece that ties it all together. Mrs. Andrews’ daughter, Shelly, was in my graduating class, living just up Pecos Street. A few years ago, I shared the note with her. She was kind, as friends are, but I doubt she knew the depth of its impact – not just on me, but on my mother. That simple act of encouragement rippled through our household for more than a decade.
So, what’s the message? It isn’t about a six-year-old’s memory. It’s about a six-year-old’s action, and a teacher in her 30s who chose to encourage, and a mother who carried that encouragement forward year after year. Mrs. Andrews nailed the timing. She saw a boy and a family just settling in, and she chose to notice. That note became a refrain in my life, spoken in my mother’s voice: You have a gift, and you need to use it.
Encouragement doesn’t have to be elaborate. It doesn’t have to come with exclamation marks or extra fluff. Sometimes it’s one sentence, written in a hand so beautiful it can’t be forgotten. Sometimes it’s a teacher sending a story home. Sometimes it’s a mother repeating it until a son finally begins to believe it himself.
All these years later, I can still see the snow falling, still feel the Big Chief paper under my hand, still hear Mrs. Andrews’ steady voice, still picture that looping cursive note, and I can hear my mother’s voice-part encouragement, part humor-telling me to “make us all rich.”
The truth is, I never made anyone rich with my writing. But what Mrs. Andrews and my mother gave me was something better: the sense that words matter, that stories matter, that timing matters. And if you’re fortunate, the right words at the right time will last a lifetime.
More from Stan Leech’s Faith & Leadership column: For the mother whose voice runs through these stories, read The Gospel According to Scottie. For another 1960s memory that opened the Christmas season, read Viking and Dolphins.
