StoryCorps: Walt Shaffner

When Walt Shaffner became an assistant principal, his father, Ted, gave him an unusual gift: a tiny megaphone and a toy baseball bat. The gifts were inspired, Shaffner says, by the character of the principal in the Edward James Olmos film Lean on Me. Along with the toys was a note, promising that Shaffner would have the genuine articles on his next promotion, so he could walk the halls as a principal. Shaffner had only begun to work as a full principal, when their father died suddenly just a few years later. After the funeral, Shaffner's mother brought out a box. In it were a baseball bat and a megaphone with a note saying, "You've earned the real thing. Love, Dad." It wasn't until several years later that Shaffner looked at the two notes together and noticed that the handwriting was different. He realized then that his mother, knowing about her husband's promise, had written the note herself -- and possibly even bought the horn and bat. "I think the fact that Mom had the wherewithal to sit down and write this," Mary Fischer says, "was remarkable." "That was kind of a powerful one for me," Shaffner says. "The power of a promise kept."