Scottish Rite & Sam the Man

Sam was given the very special honor of being the "poster child" (the easiest way of explaining it) for the Scottish Rite Learning Children's Center this year. He has been receiving speech therapy there for about a year and a half and has done REALLY well. His therapist, Helen, is just in love with Sam and has been blown away by his progress...so when she was asked to choose a child to come to the annual Scottish Rite banquet, well, guess who she chose? Sam the Man!

So for those of you who don't really know too much about the Scottish Rite Masons and their organization - join the crowd! I really don't get how it all works but here is a link to what Wikipedia has to say about it. The Center where Sam goes for therapy is funded mostly by these wonderful men (the Scottish Rite members) as well as other public and private donations. It's a pretty cool place.

Back to Sam's special night...

As part of the banquet our family was invited as special guests to their "temple" (it's that cool building on South Temple and 700 East with the lion-looking creatures out front) and tell the masons about our experience with the Center. Matt put together a great talk (with slides and video!) and then Sam got up with Helen and gave his own little "talk" (but his was about Thomas the Tank Engine). It was amazing! As part of Matt's presentation he showed some video footage of Sam when he was only making a few sounds (no speech yet) about the same time he started receiving therapy at the Center. So it was pretty cool for the masons to see how far Sam has come! When Sam was done telling them about Thomas, the 150+ audience gave him a huge round of applause and Sam just beamed. I found out later that when they were clapping he turned to Helen and said, "They're clapping for ME!" Ahhhh, what a guy.

Here he is in action


We are so proud of our Sam the Man!