THE ORIGINAL "STAR CHILD": ESTHER'S STORY
Esther Earl is one of the most important members of Team Awesome, but Esther will never be able to physically be with us at team meetings, training runs, or even at our races. Esther, an insightful, creative, funny young teen died in 2010 shortly after her 16th birthday. More than anything she taught us that a short life isn’t necessarily a bad one. She didn’t have time for what most would consider “big” life experiences, but she did her best to fit all of the important life experiences into her short 16 years.
She was (and is) a vibrant part of a large online community, and made many friends through this venue. This is how most of us knew Esther—through a community called the Nerdfighters. The name is really a long-standing joke—that we don’t “fight” nerds, but instead we are nerds who fight what we call “world suck”. What Esther has really cemented into our community is the idea of how important love is in our fight against all of the horrible things in this world.
She was asked shortly before she passed away what she would want for us to do every year on her birthday in perpetuity, and she could have said a lot of things, but what she chose to say was that we should tell the people in our lives how much we love them. She didn’t really mean the people that we are romantically in love with—Esther didn’t have time for that kind of love-- and so what was important to her was love for family and friends. This is the kind of person Esther Earl was.
Shortly after she passed away, her parents started a charity called “This Star Won’t Go Out”. The name is based on bracelets Esther’s friends made which said “This Star Won’t Go Out”—because Esther means star. The mission of the charity is to help families of children with life-threatening cancer. Team Awesome is the athletic team of This Star Won’t Go Out, and we help raise money for them through our running. Many of us are beginning runners, willing to try a new and very difficult thing; some of us are experienced and just want to be part of a team. Either way we are running with a purpose—to remember Esther, to keep her legacy of love alive, and to never let this star go out. Rest in awesome Esther.
Check out this playlist to see an explanation of the phenomena of Nerdfighteria and its connection to TSWGO and a girl named Esther.
