The Phoenix bid "adieu" to a dear friend - Charlene Schaar

Charlene Schaar, the mother of Dr. Mark Schaar and the grandmother of Tina and Addy Schaar,
was laid to rest on Tuesday, May 19th. "Oma", as she was affectionately known
by the Phoenix Elite players, was an ever present at league games and tournaments
around the country, along with her husband, Bill.

Loved and respected for her friendship and willingness to help others,
it was obvious "Oma"touched the lives of many. The funeral home and the church
overflowed with folks, young and old, stopping by to pay their last respects.

Vaya con Dios, amiga.

We are all like one winged angels.
It's only when we help each other that we can fly.
~~ Luciano de Crescenzo

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams.
Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential.
Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in,
but with what it is still possible for you to do.
-- Pope John XXIII.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Anna Quindlen's commencement address
to Villanova University, Friday 23 June 2000

"It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive an honorary doctorate from this great university. It's an honor to follow my great-uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and my Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told you something important about their professions, about medicine or commerce. I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.

Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for re-election because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed wish I had spent more time in the office."

Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."

I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.

So here's what I wanted to tell you today: get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a cheerio with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a student, still learning how to best treasure your connection to others. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter.

Kiss your Mom. Hug your Dad. Get a life in which you are generous. Look around at the azaleas in the neighborhood where you grew up; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted.

Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kids eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.

It is so easy to exist instead of live. I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all.

I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly.

And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived."

Interested in housing a foreign exchange student???

Here's your chance.

Special Request to Soccer people:

I was wondering if you could pass this email on to your contacts/teams/players/coaches who might be interested. We really need your help in placing exchange students who are involved in soccer and many other activities.

We are looking for volunteers who are interested in possibly hosting an exchange student for the 09/10 school year. We have students 15-18 years old from around the world that will be arriving in August for 5 or 10 months. We need host families for these students.

Without host families, we would not be able to help these students achieve their American Dream! Host families need only to provide a bed for the student and meals at home. Students can share a room with another kid. All other expenses are the student's responsibility. Host Families can consist of all makeups such as single families, couples with no kids, retirees, empty nesters, etc. These students make great mentors to younger children as well.
Please pass my information along to anyone that might be of interest.

Your help is greatly appreciated, as we still have several students to place with good host families! Exchange students can be a positive influence on your family, school, and community!

Sincerely,

Lisa Cabadas
Area Administrator- Michigan
877-706-2508 toll free
313-580-9594 cell
www.chinet.org/ayp