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This inspirational tale of the teacher who made a difference (and its unnecessary explanatory coda) can be found on hundreds of web sites all over the Internet and has been widely forwarded as a good luck chain letter via e-mail. And why not? It epitomizes principles we fervently wish to believe: that a dedicated educator (and religion) can make a positive, lasting difference in one's life; and that the world would be a better place if we found it in our hearts to reach out to each other. (Just in case we missed the point, the didactic end paragraph states it explicitly.) Sister Helen Mrosla, a Franciscan nun, submitted All the Good Things to Proteus, A Journal of Ideas in 1991. Her article also appeared in Reader's Digest that same year, was reprinted in the original Chicken Soup for the Soul book in 1993, and was offered yet again in 1996's Stories for the Heart. Sister Mrosla first met Mark Eklund in her third-grade classroom at St. Mary's School in Morris, Minnesota, in 1959, and she encountered him again in 1965 when she served as his junior high math teacher. In April 1971, Mark was sent to Vietnam and assigned to the 585th Transportation Company in Phu Bai where he worked in a truck parts depot, and he kept in touch with his family and friends (including Sister Mrosla) through letters. In August 1971, as she was returning from a vacation, Sister Mrosla learned of Mark's death from her parents. (Although he died in Vietnam, Mark Eklund was not killed in combat; he died in his sleep of a pulmonary and cerebral edema.) In 1999, Sister Mrosla talked to an Associated Press reporter about Mark Eklund: Although Sister Mrosla indicated she was happy that the circulation of her article on the Internet had brought Mark's story to a global audience, she was less than pleased that it had been turned into a chain letter promising good luck to recipients who passed it on. It cheapens it somehow, she said.
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