NATION RECOGNIZES SHORT LIFE'S BIG LEGACY

Even in death, Traci Taylor continues to inspire young people across the nation.

The Cape Girardean lived with leukemia for 13 or her 19 tender years. Feeling OK on some days, tired and ill on others, how easy it would have been for Traci to give up hope of making a contribution to our community.

But she didn't. To the contrary, she established the Toy Train program at Southeast Missouri Hospital, collecting toys for the young patients there and distributing them. Certainly, she was familiar with the boredom, monotony and discomfort that accompany children's long stays in hospital beds.

In 1993, the Toy Train program earned her a place as one of 50 people chosen nationwide for a Real Heroes award given by Maxwell House. She flew to Washington for the ceremony and collected her award from former first lady Barbara Bush. She also appeared on "CBS This Morning."

Three years later, she was one of the Missouri winners of Prudential's Spirit of Community award.

Her health problems grew worse. She had a kidney transplant with her mother as the donor. She contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion. She needed a double lung transplant.

Last February, weighing only 80 pounds, she died.

But the Toy Train lives on, kept running by hospital volunteers and family members, including Traci's parents, Pat and Donna Taylor.

And Traci's memory lives on as well, most recently through a thin magazine called Know Your World Extra, a spin-off publication of the Weekly Reader news magazine for elementary students.

She was nominated for the magazine's Person of the Year. Readers were asked to vote in a online poll.

The competition was stiff: President Bill Clinton, "who worked hard for peace," according to the magazine. Shaquille O'Neal, a basketball player who "raised money for needy kids." Britney Spears, a singer recognizable to every teen in America, who "became the spokeswoman for a children's charity in 2000."

But after a month of e-voting, the choice was clear.

Traci won by a landslide, 75 percent to Spears' 11 percent, Clinton's 7 percent and O'Neal's 4 percent. All other nominees received 3 percent.

Yes, local media coverage of Traci's posthumous nomination probably helped. But certainly, every young person who read the magazine, healthy or living with illness, admired her unwavering spirit, an inspiration to us all.