I hope that by the time you read this, Indiana will have whirled out of the eye of the Polar Vortex, but I do want to make another reference to a cold-weather activity that I was alerted to in an e-mail from my pool league operator: “A quick commercial time out. This Saturday I will be jumping into an outdoor swimming pool for the Special Olympics Polar Plunge.” I became interested in this “commercial” because the organization’s previous e-mails were confined to my primary concerns: where and when to shoot pool (why is a given for we who shoot pool).
John Schoonveld operates the Central Indiana APA (American Poolplayers Association), a business he has participated in for 17 years. In the time that I have been a member of this division (I have been an APA member since 2007) I have received no e-mails from John that did not address issues related to the league.
John’s “commercial” continued on to state that he was “going to take the plunge for (his) nephew Nick and so many others that benefit from Special Olympics.” The e-mail was, in part, a low-key solicitation for funds. But I look for the “humans” behind the words, and in early February, I spoke to John in his billiard shop. I kidded him about his “polar plunge,” which occurred on January 25th on the campus of Butler University. I noted that, despite the fact that the city had been locked into single-digit temperatures for some time, the temperature had risen to a balmy 30º at the time of his plunge.
“It was cold, and they were shoveling snow into the pool to make it colder,” John said.
John’s nephew has Down’s syndrome, and participation in Special Olympics has been beneficial to Nick and his friends. John operates three small businesses and is active in church, which makes it hard to schedule outside activities. But his family — John has five brothers and five sisters — “put out a call.” John’s sons had taken the “Polar Plunge” in previous years, and this past January, he decided to join them.
I sat in John’s office and listened as he spoke; in the background, “Snooker” the office cat was demonstrating dominance over keyboards and papers and curiosity about the fax machine. John is self-effacing and deflective of praise for what others would see as “good works.” He grew up in a small town, “where everybody helped everybody,” and was careful to make sure that I not distort his commitment to Special Olympics. “I’m a ‘behind-the-scenes’ kind of person,” he said, then spoke of making sure that he had a shovel in his car to help those that he might see stuck in the snow as “what we should do.”
John Schoonveld — who does not want this column to be about himself, and may disagree about some of my observations — may not see that his participation in that one moment on January 25th was significant in the big picture of the things people do to make a better place. In that, he may be right. He was doing something that he felt would benefit his nephew. But the lonely stone we throw into the water creates ripples that reach other shores. John’s plunge, one among 14 divers that raised money for Washington county, created waves that overtook the hearts of many, mine among them.
It is possible that I have gotten this wrong, but I believe this happened: on January 25th, a good thing was done for a good cause and John participated. It is as simple and great, as that.