How are legends born? Was Johnny Appleseed a real person? If so, how did his fame spread? These questions have presented themselves to me since the day Owen Shreffler came to school carrying a giant plastic trash bag full of garbage. Owen, now a sixth grader in San Diego, was a student in my first grade class at Benchley-Weinberger Elementary School five years ago. Owen is your basic shy, somewhat goofy, baseball-playing eleven-year-old from a typical family living in the suburb of San Carlos. He carries no airs and probably has yet to discover girls. But, five years ago, he set his world on its ear by starting what is now called “Owen Shreffler Day.”
I’m not sure how many of you spend time with six-year-olds with any regularity, but first grade students are probably the most earnest, sincere, “I want to change the world” activists anyone could ever recruit. These kids dive headfirst, with reckless abandon, into whatever they find worthy of their attention. The topic of the day, back when Owen graced my classroom, was the Islands of Trash coagulating in our oceans. At the time, the two in the Pacific Ocean were nearly twice the size of Texas and growing at an alarming rate of ten times their previous size every ten years!
Well, Owen would have none of that nonsense! On the Friday before Martin Luther King Day, in 2011, Owen did something about it! He announced to his classmates he was going to clean up his street and not stop until he had filled a whole kitchen-sized garbage bag with trash. The day after MLK Day, Owen returned to school with evidence of his activism – a full kitchen-sized bag of trash from the streets around his house. The other students were rocked by their newly anointed hero. Owen became an instant celebrity in Room 9! "Owen Shreffler Day" was born.
Since that notable day in January of 2011, students in Mr. Patterson’s class have celebrated “Owen Shreffler Day” each year by picking up trash from the streets around their houses on Martin Luther King Day.
Owen Shreffler, a modern-day Johnny Appleseed-like cult hero, has thus become a legend to anyone who enters Mr. Patterson’s class. I’m not sure, though, just how conscious Owen is regarding his lofty status. You see, Owen is probably off somewhere playing video games unaware he is a modern-day champion.
I think Martin Luther King, Jr., if he were alive today, would cherish the honor of sharing his day with Owen Shreffler, Legend of Benchley-Weinberger, unassuming founder of “Owen Shreffler Day.”