Last week the lead article in our local newspaper brought tears to my eyes. I’d remembered the story while it was still happening in 1972. An eighth grade boy named Chris Millard had written a story called The Four Diamonds. He was a cancer patient and the Cancer Society was using his story, with his approval, of course, to raise funds. There were interviews, stories, and, later that year, the obituary when he died. He was courageous and greatly missed.
In following years, the story was told again. But I hadn’t heard too much about it in recent years. Until this year. The woman who had been his teacher realized that the current students knew nothing about his story. So she and the boy’s father told bits about it for the newspaper.
The teacher had asked her students to write an autobiography, but Chris told her, since he was so sick, and knew how the disease would end, didn’t really want to. She suggested he write whatever he wanted to, and he did. His father said he never showed his work in progress, but occasionally said, “I’ve got another diamond!”
Unfortunately, I’ve never read his story, The Four Diamonds. But I do know that it impressed everyone.
I expect I’ll learn how to do this better, but here is the link to that article: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/826208_Elizabethtown-eighth-grader-who-died-of-cancer-wrote-story-in-1972-that-inspired-the-Four-Diamonds-Fund.html