I had never seen kids so falling down, jumping and laughing, out-of-their-minds wild since the last time I offered to take a group of them out for ice cream. It is not hard to work kids up.
It is absolutely nirvana to them to witness a little girl shave a grown man with a full head of dark black hair clean-as-your-hand bald. This is particularly so when the man happens to be their school principal.
They had been bugging Robert Lopez all morning about whether he was going to do it, even the leg-climbing kindergartners. Even I had my doubts.
He is the principal of Zerger Elementary School in Westminster. And last Monday, he tossed down a challenge to the 288 students:
If they filled a 5-gallon water-cooler bottle with all the change they could find, he would shave his head.
Lopez arrived at work last Tuesday and witnessed some of his youngest students shaking out the contents of their piggy banks onto the white folding tables he’d set up outside the school’s main office.
Other kids brought $5 and $1 bills and asked the teachers and secretaries if they had change. They didn’t, they said, but would take the bills and get change at the bank over lunch.
By Thursday, the water bottle emblazoned with a colorful “Change for Elizabeth” sign was filled to its neck.
Robert Lopez’s hair was toast.
He shrugged and put up another water bottle, placing a “More Change for Elizabeth” sign on it. By Friday afternoon, it was a quarter of the way full.
“Elizabeth” is Elizabeth Norton, a Zerger sixth- grader, who last month was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a bone cancer in her leg. She’d had surgery and now is undergoing chemotherapy.
Parents at Zerger two weeks ago held a bake sale to benefit the family. It raised $1,100.
“I challenged the kids,” Lopez, 41, said. “I said, ‘OK, we’ve seen how generous your parents are. Let’s see how generous you are.’ Could they do without that new Wii game to help Elizabeth?”
He had to give them something. He’d done the same thing years before at a high school where he taught. So the hair would grow back, he said.
There has to be hundreds of dollars in the two jugs, he estimated.
“I think it is so important that kids learn the lesson that you help others when there is need,” he said. “I thought this was a great opportunity.”
Elizabeth only days earlier had lost most of her hair and shaved the rest off.
“It is a nice way,” Lopez said, “to show solidarity with her, to support her this way.”
At 3 p.m. Friday, the school kids filed into the auditorium and sat on the floor in front of a small, brown folding chair flanked by the two bottles.
“Shave it! Shave it!” the students screamed.
Lopez took his seat and invited Elizabeth’s younger sister, Jillian, a fourth-grader, to do the honors.
The little girl grabbed the clippers and went at her principal’s hair with gusto, going front to back, shaving him clean inside of five minutes.
“That was a lot of fun!” Jillian said when she was done.
If even little kids can care so much for a classmate, you just have to believe there is hope for the future.
To read about Elizabeth, go to .
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
