Sunday, January 28, 2018

Thank heaven times are chaning


Gilbert and Grace Caldwell got married 60 years ago. They were overjoyed as they drove eight hours from North Carolina to their honeymoon room in the romantic Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. But when they arrived at the Mt. Airy Hotel and presented their room reservation, they were told that if they stayed overnight the other guests would be very unhappy, because the Caldwell's are black. Grace recalls they were put up in a nearby hunting lodge where everyone had rifles. This misfortune led Gilbert to a life-long career in civil rights. He worked side-by-side with Martin Luther King Jr. Today the couple still gives talks at schools across the country, and they've told their wedding story a thousand times. But when 5th graders at Bear Tavern Elementary in Titusville, New Jersey, heard it, they could not forget it. Weeks later, it still made one little fifth-grader cry, because it was "so wrong." Soon the students created a class project. Each child wrote a letter to the Mt. Airy Hotel asking for an all-expense paid second honeymoon for the Caldwells, and the hotel agreed. The original hotel was torn down years ago, and the new one has different owners, but they wanted to make it right anyway. Said one fifth-grader, "It makes me feel really good inside because we know that even though we're just kids, we made an impact on the world."




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