CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Saturday, February 17, 2007 6:00 pm
Just before suppertime on Feb. 7, 2006, a little boy named Zach Kroeker, who lived on a farm in Jefferson County with his dad and his mom and his sister and his calves and his cats and a dog named Henry, died.
Instead of flowers for his funeral his teachers filled a basket with pencils and rulers and two books.
One was called “Salt in His Shoes,” and it was the last book Zach finished reading in Mrs. Comer’s first-grade class.
The other, “Horrible Harry in Room 2B,” was the book he never got to finish.
They put the books in the basket because Zach loved reading.
And because Zach loved reading something very special happened in the months that followed that terrible February day.
This is that story: “The Story of Zach and the Reading Thrones.”
Chapter One: The Principal and Zach’s Parents
One day last spring, a mom and a dad came to see Mr. Christiansen, the principal of Central Elementary School in Fairbury.
They were the parents of a 7-year-old boy named Zach, who had died in an accident.
Zach was their only son. He was a boy who liked to sleep on the couch instead of his bed.
He had blond hair that didn’t like to stay combed and fingernails his mom could never keep clean.
He was always in a hurry. He didn’t crawl very long before he started walking.
He liked learning new things. He loved trains and his baby sister Brittany. He named one of his calves Spitfire and another Jake.
He liked baseball and soccer and standing on top of the big dirt pile by the driveway. He always liked to watch cartoons at suppertime, even though his parents wouldn’t always let him.
When he was a pre-schooler, he liked to crawl into his dad’s recliner and study the pictures of the big farm machines in his dad’s catalogs.
His mom liked to read and his dad liked to read and Zach liked to read.
They always kept books in the pickup his dad drove and the car his mom drove so Zach would have something to read when he felt like reading.
At school, his teachers asked him, “Zach, why is your backpack so heavy?”
He would open it up: Books!
Mr. Christiansen, Zach’s parents said that spring day, we would like to honor our son.
For five years, Jeremy Christiansen had been principal of the small brick school that went up to only the second grade.
He was a good man who loved children.
Sometimes, when he would see Zach in the hallway, he would have to give him a warning.
“Zach, watch where you’re going!”
That Zach. Reading and walking at the same time again.
Now his parents, Lois and Russ, wanted to do something special with money from Zach’s memorial.
They decided it needed to have something to do with books.
Books for the library?
A bench for reading?
A scholarship for a kid who loved reading, too?
Those were all good ideas, but they weren’t the perfect idea for Zach.
Let me talk to the teachers, Mr. Christiansen told Zach’s parents.
A few weeks later, he called Zach’s mom.
What do you think about chairs? Chairs for reading?
Chapter Two: The Carpenter and the Giant Chairs
When the carpenter was a boy, he liked to hang out in his dad’s workshop, the way Zach liked to hang out with his dad on the farm.
One day he made a chair all by himself.
The chair crashed to the ground in pieces when he sat on it.
His chair was a failure.
But after that, he decided he wanted to build things.
Brian Weishahn followed his dream and built beautiful cabinets and bookshelves and furniture.
This summer he got a phone call from Mr. Christiansen.
Did he know about Zach, the little boy from Jansen who tipped over on his four-wheeler and died?
Yes, Brian said. He did.
Then the principal told him about the idea.
Could he make nine chairs for Central Elementary School? One for each classroom?
The chairs needed to be sturdy, because they wanted them to last a long time and they wanted lots of kids to sit in them.
The carpenter said he would be happy to make the chairs and he went back to his workshop with a picture in his mind.
The chairs should look like thrones, he thought. Fit for kings and queens.
So he built the legs 3 inches thick and put the seats high off the ground, with a fancy curve instead of a straight back.
They were the kind of chairs that would never fall apart when someone sat on them.
School started as he hammered and the leaves fell off the trees and the milo turned red in the fields.
The carpenter sanded all the chairs smooth.
He felt proud of his work.
And then one day after Thanksgiving, he loaded the chairs into his trailer and delivered them to the small brick school.
Chapter Three: The Teachers and the Students Have a Plan
Mr. Christiansen and the nine teachers at his school had a plan for the nine white reading chairs.
They talked to the art teacher at the high school about it.
How about painting each chair with illustrations from children’s books? Each chair honoring an author?
Zach’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Parde, wanted Laura Numeroff, who wrote a funny book called “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.”
The summer before he died, Zach and his friend Justin took a class from Mrs. Parde and wrote a funny book, too. They called it “If You Give a Snake a Sandwich.”
Zach’s first-grade teacher wanted Marc Brown, the author of books starring an aardvark named Arthur.
Another teacher wanted Beverly Cleary and Ramona and Beezus. Another wanted Kevin Henkes, who wrote a sweet book about a mouse named “Chrysanthemum.”
All the teachers thought about Zach when they were making up their minds.
Which is why one teacher didn’t pick an author at all.
That teacher picked John Deere for her chair because Zach loved tractors and combines and farm trucks.
Connie Schouboe, the art teacher, had gone to high school with Zach’s dad. She felt sad like everyone else.
She came to the school with her art students.
Two students for each chair.
Some of the big kids knew Zach.
Alayna’s mom was Zach’s daycare lady. Jasmine’s dad was Zach’s baseball coach. Danni’s mom cut Zach’s hair.
The students came every day to paint the chairs.
The little kids watched them work.
Wow! Look at Zach’s chairs!
The big kids didn’t get the chairs finished by Christmas. They didn’t get them finished before the semester and their art class ended.
But they kept on working.
They came in at night to paint leaves and flowers and animals and funny imaginary characters.
They felt good because they were doing something good for someone. They felt sad, too, because in the middle of working on the chairs, one of the students, a girl named Heather, got sick and died suddenly, like Zach.
Her partner finished the Magic Treehouse chair without her because Heather would have wanted her to.
Alayna worked on the John Deere chair.
Zach loved those tractors. Wouldn’t it be cool to have Zach’s handwriting on the chair?
She carefully traced Zach’s signature on the back of that chair in green letters.
Then she traced the word combine, with the c turned backwards, just the way Zach wrote it.
When the paint dried they moved the chairs into the lunchroom.
They lined them up in a long row and covered them with white sheets.
Chapter Four: Unveiling the Reading Thrones
Zach died on a Tuesday.
On another Tuesday, almost a year later, Mr. Christiansen, the principal, stood in the lunchroom beside the covered chairs.
The room filled up with people.
The high school students who painted the chairs sat in the front row. The elementary students sat cross-legged on the floor. Parents came with video cameras.
The art teacher was there. And the carpenter. And so were Zach’s parents and aunts and uncles and cousins. They even had a special guest named Kim Brown, the sister of Marc Brown, who wrote the Arthur books.
All of the teachers took turns standing by their chairs with the high school students who painted them.
One by one, Mr. Christiansen pulled off the white sheets.
These are the Reading Thrones, he said.
Each teacher talked.
They uncovered the Winnie the Pooh chair. Zach was so full of energy, the teacher explained. Just like Tigger.
They uncovered a chair painted with alphabet blocks. Books take us on an adventure, the teacher said.
“If there ever was an adventurous man it was young Zach Kroeker.”
They uncovered a chair with a pink mouse and a giant flower. She was excited to have the chair in her room, the teacher said.
“It will always remind me of Zach and his family.”
Chapter Five: Zach and the Thrones
Every day at Central Elementary School in Fairbury children climb up in those big chairs.
Sometimes they read stories out loud to the others. And sometimes they read stories to themselves. And sometimes they listen to their teachers tell tales of heroic mice and funny aardvarks and smart boys and girls, just like them.
Their feet dangle off the ground.
They feel so proud, the teachers say.
Like kings and queens sitting on their thrones.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.