Champions of Breakfast

After a rough couple weeks of often horrific stories with global implications, let’s start with a simple, local, bittersweet story about community, compassion, and summoning the strength to carry on. “The ‘Wednesday Breakfast Club’ tradition came about after Sam Crowe — Winckowski’s grandson — then a freshman at Bishop DuBourg High School, floated the idea to his friends. The school has a later start on Wednesday mornings, and Crowe and his classmates typically went to a diner to have breakfast before class. One Wednesday morning at the diner, Sam told his friends that his Grandma Peggy makes a better breakfast than the restaurant. So, after checking with his grandmother — who eagerly offered to host her grandson’s friends for breakfast — a small group of high school students showed up at Winckowski’s house the following Wednesday morning. And then every Wednesday since. The gathering took on a much bigger, and sadder, meaning in July 2022, when Sam was killed in a car crash at age 15.” The tradition changed, but it continued. Sydney Page in WaPo: A teen died. Now his friends visit his grandma for breakfast each week. “I’ve lost my 15-year-old grandson, but in his place, Sam gave me 30 extra grandbabies … I think Sam is directing this from above.”