With daughters like these, it seems their parents are the real winners

American Girl Doll Essay Winner

With daughters like these, it seems their parents are the real winners.

At first, the tim- ing of this year’s American Girl Doll essay contest didn’t concern me. Even though it meant the entries would be pouring in at the same time I’d be knee-deep in the changes to my little corner of the newsroom brought about by our new press, no sweat. I could juggle both. Big mistake.

It soon became obvious that this exciting time in the life of The Vindicator and its employees would also be an incredibly busy one. Only a few of our current newsroom staffers experienced the last press changeover. Me? I missed that one by only two months. Otherwise I’d have known what to expect.

No problem. Selecting last year’s essay contest winner was easy. If this year’s response was anything like that, the winner would fall right in my lap again. Bigger mistake.

At the end of deadline day, I looked at the stack of entries that I had been unable to find time to whittle down to a manageable few. I fought the temptation to just reach in and grab one. Instead I gathered them up and headed home for the weekend.

I liken my selection of this year’s winner to that of a coach making cuts during preseason team tryouts. Long, tedious, calculated.

For the process of elimination I decided the best place to start would be to weed out the easy ones — those that were simply too long, that didn’t comply with the rules. With that, my pile was lessened by, hmm, five. I repeated the process to find any that didn’t include the required contact information. How could I call someone to tell them they won if they didn’t give me their phone number? That increased the rejection pile to only six. Uh oh. At this point, I put the coffeepot on. It was going to be a long afternoon.

I asked for this, I suppose.

Months ago, when the time came to pick which of the American Girl dolls would be the essay prize, the choice was an easy one. We had just wrapped up our Operation: Holiday Cheer project, which draws attention to the sacrifices of our Valley soldiers.

The story that comes with the coveted essay prize, the Molly McIntire doll, is that of a 9-year-old girl living during the World War II era and how she becomes aware of the sacrifices being made by the soldiers and their families.

For a connection between the contest and prize, we went with “sacrifice” as the essay theme, asking 8- to 12-year-old girls to write about someone in their own lives who makes sacrifices of any kind for them.

It didn’t take long to realize that this topic struck a chord with the majority of our young audience, who chose to acknowledge — and with a passion — a parent or occasionally a grandparent for what they consider to be sacrifices.

That’s when the job gravitated from the couch to the living floor as my two piles soon grew to three, then four, and eventually five ... moms who go above and beyond ... dads who do without so their daughters can do ... grandparents who pinch-hit while the parents are out earning a living to provide for their family. And so on. While I suspect you parents don’t consider doing what good parents do to be sacrifices, the fact remains, you’re viewed as heroes in the eyes of these girls. I could have declared any one of them a winner based on their sincerity alone.

I can only hope that you parents had the opportunity to read your daughters’ essays before they shipped them off to Contest Central here. If you did, you received one of the most rewarding gifts a parent can receive — your child’s appreciation. In writing!

If you’re like me you’ll: 1. realize those precious sentences make all of those difficult times of responsible parenting worth it, and 2. use it as ammo for the next difficult time of responsible parenting.

Just as I was starting to fear that this year’s contest would end in a stalemate, my sixth pile, the “nonparent” pile, produced what I feel is the hands-down winner.

As it turned out, 8-year-old Anna Buffone of Leetonia took the theme one step further and zeroed in on war-related sacrifices, in keeping with Molly’s story. A few others did so as well, but what set Anna’s entry apart was how she acknowledged such sacrifices on two levels — the sacrifices one particular soldier is making to keep Anna and her country safe as well as the sacrifices that result for his family. It was not only insightful, but sensitive. Special enough to leave her contenders in her dust.

Anna wasn’t done impressing me, either. When she came to the newsroom to claim her doll, her parents, John and Nicole Buffone, brought me up to speed on what transpired after she got “the call.” She told them that she thought she should give Molly to Sophia Encina, the schoolmate Anna refers to in her essay, since she won the doll based on Sophia’s trying circumstances while her dad is serving in Afghanistan.

With that, John and Nicole sprung into action, looking for a suitable solution. I suspect they felt, as I do, that both girls deserve a doll.

That solution came when John, whose job with First Merit Bank in Akron puts him in touch with Ohio car dealers, contacted a longtime friend and client, Steve Bott, sales manager at Mark Thomas Ford in Cortland. Steve, in turn, took the heartwarming story directly to the owner, Tom Levak. And, yep, you’ve no doubt guessed it. Tom is making sure a second doll finds its way into this happy ending.

Epilogue:

Joining Anna in the newsroom this week was another winner, Elizabeth King of Canfield, whose name was pulled in The Vindicator’s drawing for a doll.

She says she’ll be adding Julie Albright, the fun-loving California girl in the American Girl Doll product line, to her collection of childhood dolls that she has on display in a spare room at her home.

Congratulations to both winners! Based on the enthusiasm of the young girls who called during these recent weeks to make sure I received their entries, then the disappointment in their voices in recent days when I had to tell them that the winner had been notified, I have to say, these are two, no, three lucky ladies!

Barb Shaffer is Society/Features Editor for The Vindicator.