Students learn good choices at ?Operation Snowflake?

Junior high students gathered at Immanuel Lutheran Church Saturday for an all-day event intended to discourage drugs and alcohol while promoting healthy decision-making. The event is known as ?Operation Snowflake? and is in its fifth year in Washington.

The day began at 8 a.m. when 70 junior high students arrived at the church to eat breakfast. The students listened to a couple of speakers in the morning. One speaker was Sheila Hildebrand. Hildebrand is a life coach from Brighton. Another speaker was Robert Schmill. Schmill is from Omaha and started a foundation called ?Matt?s Dream.? The foundation is named after his son, who was killed by an underage drunk driver. The foundation works to stiffen the penalties for drinking and driving.

After hearing the speakers, the students broke up into small groups to discuss what they heard. Fourteen high school students and another 15 adults sat in on the small group discussions.

The keynote speaker of the day was Jeff Yalden. Yalden is a life coach who hails from New Hampshire. He has been featured on the MTV television show ?Made.?

Yalden talked about how he excelled in athletics as an adolescent, earning all-state honors in basketball and football and an all-area honor in baseball. However, Yalden struggled academically. He scored a 610 on the SAT out of a possible 1600, and was told that was the lowest score of anyone who took the test in New Hampshire. He graduated with a high school rank of 128

^th

in a class of 133.

?When I graduated from high school, my parents kicked me out of the house,? Yalden said.

Yalden joined the Marine Corps a year later and served during the Gulf War. Yalden became a two-time ?Marine of the Year? and played for the All-Marine-Corps basketball team. Yalden got married and raised two daughters. He told the students about an incident a few years ago when his wife called him and told him that his daughters were no longer welcome in her house. Yalden eventually gained full custody of his daughters.

Yalden incorporated his daughters into later portions of his presentation. Yalden spoke about how adults do not do enough to teach character to children.

?Today, we think it?s more important to teach kids to take tests than to teach them about the importance of a handshake,? he said. ?My daughters now know, when a boy comes to their house to meet their dad, they tell them, ?You need to know how to shake my dad?s hand. If you don?t know how, and he doesn?t like you, he?s going to call you a bad name and tell you to get out of the house.??

Yalden picked a boy at random from the audience to shake hands with. He went up to a boy named Michael, and was impressed at how Michael stood up to shake his hand. Yalden said nobody had ever done that before at any of his other talks.

?Michael, you can date my daughters,? Yalden said.

In his closing remarks, Yalden told the students that there were three things they had to do in life. Yalden said he heard about the ?three things? from a speech that former North Carolina State head coach Jim Valvano gave during the ESPY Awards in 1993. Valvano?s speech has become famous because Valvano delivered it when it was ill with bone cancer. He died eight weeks after delivering the speech. Valvano?s three things were to laugh, to take time to think and to let your emotions move you to tears.

Operation Snowflake began in Illinois in the 1970s. That is where Washington social studies teacher Rachel Meyer became involved in it. When Meyer moved to Washington, she brought Snowflake with her. Washington is now the home of the only certified chapter of Operation Snowflake in the state of Iowa, and Meyer is its director.