There’s an old saying that it takes a village to raise a child. That was true for this lonely 4-year-old in North Carolina.
What his neighborhood didn’t know, however, was that it sometimes takes a child to raise a village.
Roman, from Concord, was a happy enough child who loves sports and athletics. But that changed when his parents got divorced, and his father moved away.
His grandparents live out of state, and though like all young boys his mom means the world to him, Roman developed into an inner loneliness.
Before all that, though, Roman woke up every morning looking for someone to say hello to. He’d stay by the door and wave at anyone who passed by the house; garbage man, Amazon driver, or one of the many neighbors that his mother, Anna Butzloff, said she didn’t know personally.
This story started with an old adage, and now here’s another one: people just don’t know their neighbors anymore. That was Butzloff’s case, so she was at a loss for what to do when all those people her son had been waving to started to come over and say hello.
It started with Wade Folger, a retired man who lived next door and the subject of many a “hey” from Roman. One day, he came over to talk. Soon after, he started to ask Roman if he wanted to come over and do stuff.
Eventually, Steve Hartman reports from his “On the Road” segment, other neighbors started to follow up on all those heys and handwaving, and before long, Roman had made some friends.
“I didn’t really know how to take it,” said Butzloff. “I just saw that my son was happy.”
That son of hers, like the Sun in the sky, soon became the light of their neighborhood. Inviting his senior citizen neighbors to his swim meets, basketball, soccer, and baseball practices, his preschool open house, and his frequent pastime of drag racing his bike down the block. When his birthday rolled around, his mother knew exactly who to call.
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He stitched together the neighborhood like a quilt, curing his loneliness, and changing his little world besides.
Hartman got the neighbors together and asked them what it was all like, and even though most of them came from an earlier generation to Roman’s mom, most of them didn’t know each other either. Now, they wave at each other, just like Roman did.
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“Look at what this little kid has built,” said one.
“It does,” another says, pausing, “it does a world of good.”
“If the world was like this child, what an awesome, awesome place it would be,” said the eldest among them.
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