To the Band of Brothers: February 26, 2021
Good morning!
I’ve been dying to tell you guys an interesting story. It goes to prove what I have said all along about the Belen brotherhood and is just one more bit of evidence that gives credence to the Band of Brothers theme for the year.
Last week I got a text message from a Belen alumnus from the early 90s. His son has been sick and, like a champ, battling a very rare disease for most of his life. They needed to do a bone marrow biopsy at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and then send it to the medical labs at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for testing. The whole situation was highly time-sensitive because the shelf life for the sample was only 48 hours.
Then Mother Nature struck. You will remember the massive snowstorms that hit the greater part of the country last week. We didn’t know too much about it unless we read the newspapers, because while people in Texas were shoveling snow, in Miami we were playing golf and hanging out on the beach.
FedEx was able to get the critical sample to Nashville, Tennessee, but there it got stuck because of the snowstorm. For as much as our Belen alumnus and dad called the offices of Federal Express and spoke to many people, he just couldn’t get the ball moving and his son’s biopsy to Cincinnati. That’s when the Holy Spirit stepped in.
He sent a text to me explaining the situation. I went to our Director of the Alumni Association and asked if we had any alumni who worked for FedEx. Several years ago, we launched a program called Bconnected. It’s an online platform for our alumni. It’s very interactive and allows them to update their current information. This way, we create a directory that carries information about where you live, what you do, and the different services you can provide.
In addition, it gives younger alumni an opportunity to see where they can get jobs, internships, and mentorships. Just imagine, you are a Belen alumnus and you are going to school at the University of Chicago. You can look up the alumni who live in the Windy City and have someone you can reach out to in case you get winded and need to unwind. Or, you are an alumnus and you just got a new job in Philadelphia. You don’t know anyone there. Well, Bconnected can connect you with a Belen brother in the City of Brotherly Love.
Now, back to our story.
It just so happens we have an alumnus who works in the main offices of FedEx. We reached out to him, explained the situation, and the ball got rolling quickly. From the nervous dad, to me, to the Alumni Director, to the alumnus at FedEx, to the President of FedEx in Los Angeles, to his man in Memphis. The package was identified, put in the back seat of a car, and driven to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Mission accomplished.
There is no doubt there are a lot of great things about our school. It’s those great things that have been going on a long time that help create a network of Belen brothers that rise to the occasion when needed and are called upon. It is just one more example of the fact that in life, just as important as what you know is who you know. And, as a member of the Belen community, you know a lot of people.
Get BConnected.
Auspice Maria
BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain. The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline. In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty. The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow. Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.