Why FIRST is important...

[prettycolors91]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

After congratulating friends at Saturday's awards ceremony, I raced over to Centennial Park. I was fortuneate enough to have a VIP pass, and the main person I wanted to talk to* in the VIP tent was Dr. Murphy. He has not been to the Championships since 2003, and his presence has been sorely missed. I got my chance to speak with him, and we had a 15-20 minute conversation. Toward the end of our talk, I noticed Dr. Joe standing close by. At a break in our talk, I introduced Joe to Dr. Murphy, saying "Joe is one of my heroes in FIRST". It was pretty neat to be able to introduce one man that I admire very much to another who we both admire.

That reminds me of a profound story of my own from Championships.

Me and one other girl from my team were to show around a possible ambassador of FIRST. We got Dr. Murphy's wife. I remember the people in charge of the Hall of Fame gave us a list of teams to visit and why we should show them to our ambassador. More than half of the teams on the list were on the list for "strong corporate sponsors". We went to the team who won woodie flowers, and some other teams that won some other awards, and she seemed really distant and non-talkative and it seemed odd to me, because she didn't seem like that kind of person. So I said to Kristen, "We really shouldn't take her to the corporate sponsor teams" "Why not?" "Because thats not what FIRST is really about, is it? She doesn't seem to care about what teams have won or whether the have money. I know I don't." and then she turned around and said "Take me to a team that HASN'T won anything" and she stood there and talked to a rookie team who hadn't done much of anything for about a half hour. Then we let HER lead US around. After that, she told us all sorts of amazing stories and I found myself really enjoying talking to her.

It made me realize that it really doesn't matter what you win, or how much money is in your team budget, all that matters is that your THERE, your having FUN, and your GP all the way no matter what.