[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
 |
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
|
|
|
1.26.2001 08:23
Someone to 'open up to'
By S. ROBERT CHIAPPINELLI
Journal Staff Writer
CRANSTON
-- The first time Donna Burns, of Cranston, met Nichole Daigle, they went to a McDonald's and Burns watched her new Little Sister frolic in the play area. "She had the innocence of 12 1/2," Burns recalled.
Back then, Burns, at 5-feet 1-inch, was taller than Nichole. Now, 6 1/2 years later, Nichole stands 5-feet 8-inches tall, and towers over her Big Sister.
But what has grown even more is their friendship.
"Ever since then, she's been my best friend," Nichole said.
"I know I wouldn't be where I am now if it wasn't for the guidance and love of Donna."
The Big Sisters of Rhode Island recently honored Burns as the Rhode Island Big Sister of The Year 2001 in a ceremony at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, in Warwick.
Pat Hambrick, executive director of Big Sisters, says the agency's motto is "Giving girls wings" and its mission is "to reduce each girl's vulnerability by enabling her to thrive emotionally, socially and academically."
Nichole, with Burns's guidance, illustrates that so well, Hambrick said.
"This young woman has overcome many obstacles," she said, "and is herself a role model for other young girls facing difficulties in their lives."
During their match, Daigle lived in a half-dozen places and changed high schools several times. Her father died when she was 13, and two years later, she said, her mother was jailed for a time. "I've been living pretty much on my own since then," she said.
She started at the Alan Shawn Feinstein High School for Public Service, in Providence, then began bouncing among homes of friends and relatives. She attended South Kingstown High School, Toll Gate High School, in Warwick, and Feinstein again.
One constant through those tumultuous years has been Burns, a nurse in the labor room at Women & Infants Hospital, in Providence..
The nervousness Nichole felt during their initial meeting quickly evaporated. "I found her to be very, very cool," she said of Burns. "She seemed very interesting. She seemed like somebody I could open up to."
Burns, in turn, found Nichole welcomed new experiences. They roller-skated and visited beaches and bikepaths, watched movies and went to festivals, including a Native American event that particularly interested Nichole, because that is part of her heritage. And they dined out regularly.
"We've been to almost every chain up and down Route 2," Burns said.
Eating out served a two-fold purpose. Burns was assured that Nichole, with her peripatetic existence, would at least have a good meal. And the meetings provided a forum to discuss problems that seemed to descend on Nichole at a much fiercer rate than others experienced.
Burns first helped her Little Sister cope with the loss of her father.
Nichole admires Burns's listening skills and says that while she loves her motherdearly, she could not always talk everything through with her the way she can with Burns.
Matched in July of 1994, the two remain paired today, even though Nichole, now 19 and living in Providence's Smith Hill section, is a year beyond the usual cutoff point for Little Sisters. But Big Sisters lets matches continue until high school graduation. For Nicole, who loves Feinstein High School, that will come in June.
She hopes to become a registered nurse -- like a certain friend -- but for now, money considerations make that goal long term. She plans to attend the Community College of Rhode Island, continue working for the East Side YMCA, in Providence, and take all the training that the Y offers. "Any sort of training I can take, I'll take," she said.
"I'm a lifeguard there and basically everything else," she said. She helps with child care, the front desk and aerobics. She has taken swim lesson and aerobic instructor training and says her boss, family director Brian Crooks, is terrific.
"I love this place. It's really nice," she said. "It's like a home. It's been instrumental in my development. It's helping me toward a career."
She gets home from work usually about 9:30 p.m. and sometimes studies until 11 or 12. Sundays she works as a cashier at Tommy's Pizza, in Providence, and she also has squeezed in some volunteering at Rhode Island Hospital.
Recently, Burns has been helping sort through college financial aid forms for her friend, who has faced many adult responsibilities so early in life.
"Part of my role lately has been to assure her that she's really doing fine," Burns said. With all that Nichole has endured, she still is in school and working toward some realistic goals, her Big Sister said. Nichole won a Y youth-volunteer-of-the-year award in her freshman year and recently was chosen as a recipient of a "Youth Caring for Others" award.
"I'm so proud of her," Burns said. "I've proud of how far she's come."
For Nichole's 18th birthday, her Big Sister took her on a trip to New York, and they still see each other regularly.
"I believe in her," Burns said. "Right now it's time for her to believe in herself."
At the Big Sister recognition dinner, someone raised the issue of their match finally ending. Burns, who intends to remain a mentor and friend to Nichole, glimpsed a little bit of that innocence she saw when they first met when her concerned Little Sister asked: "Can I still call you?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
Printer-Friendly Version
