Off Beat: Tooth or consequences: Fruit choice bites school volunteers

For nearly a decade, local restaurateur Mark Matthias and Jim Sork, head of the Vancouver School District Foundation, have teamed to feed hundreds of first-graders a memorable Dr. Seuss-worthy meal each year.

Matthias, owner of Beaches Restaurant & Bar, supplies the suitably tinted Green Eggs and Ham — hundreds of pounds of it.

Sork, who will retire from his Foundation gig in June, hams it up as the prankish Cat in the Hat, fully costumed in face paint and long whiskers.

The breakfast blitz spotlights a nationwide Read Across America push for children’s literacy. It’s pegged to the March 2 birth date of Seuss himself — author Theodor Seuss Geisel.

The menu typically includes choice of an apple or a banana, although they left bananas off the shopping list this time.

The two veterans were enjoying another successful effort when they saw something amiss: Few pupils were eating those shiny red apples.

It didn’t take long to solve the mystery, once they stopped to chat with three young girls who flashed telltale grins.

“There wasn’t a front tooth in the room!” Sork recalled.

“It never occurred to us: First graders don’t have front teeth.”

Lesson learned, Sork said. Next year’s feast promises to feature bananas again.

Stringing ’em along

Sork learned a lot in nine years as foundation executive director.

Earlier this year, Sork and foundation board members personally handed $85,000 worth of enrichment awards to Vancouver teachers for special field trips, curriculum, new books and other student opportunities.

Their roaming “Prize Patrol” uses oversized checks, noisemakers and balloons to celebrate the awards, surprising teachers in their classrooms.

It caught the notice of folks at the Evergreen School District Foundation, who wanted to replicate the tour. Sork was glad to share advice with his crosstown peers — save for one small but tricky detail.

Sork & Co. quickly learned how a carload of inflated balloons and their dangling strings becomes a huge, knotted mess. The secret?

Wrap the strings in plastic to keep them separated.

“That’s something we wanted them to … experience for themselves,” Sork said, with something more like a Cheshire Cat grin.

Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.