Other Make a Difference Day celebs:
Writer Anchee Min on the value of education
Wally Lamb brings the expressiveness of writing to prison inmates
Robert Putnam, writer of Bowling Alone, is optimistic toward youth
Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays With Morrie, finds his late teacher's words live on.
Arthur author Marc Brown believes where kids read, kids help others
Christopher Paul Curtis, author of Bud, Not Buddy, hails a hero he overlooked -- his dad.
Marc Parent, Turning Stones author, makes a difference to a dying woman's cat.
Ana Castillo, poet and author, tells how a gathering replenishes women who make a difference.
Ann Hood, author of Ruby and the upcoming Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time, comforts the spirit by feeding the sad, the lost and the lonely.
Justin Timberlake makes a difference through music
Wish You Well writer David Baldacci, learns a lesson from young writers
Patricia Cornwell, writer of The Last Precinct recalls what a world-renowned evangelist did for a scared little girl

Don't be scared to get involved

Named "one of the best young fiction writers in America" by The New Yorker, Matthew Klam, author of Sam the Cat & Other Stories, felt his dad and a special boy named Mark made a real difference.

he first experience my father had with a handicapped child scared him. It happened in 1983, at a Special Olympics track meet in New York. My father had joined a colleague from work and volunteered for the day's events. Dad was designated a "hugger," one of the adults who caught kids at the end of each race.

"Here was this kid in a wheelchair, and when he came down and I hugged him, he pulled my glasses off and I got nervous," said my father. "But then I realized he was trying to hug me back."

The little boy was named Mark. Like my father, he had red hair -- but the color was even brighter, almost orange, more like my younger cousin Jon.

Jon was just about Mark's age, a healthy young boy with an unobstructed bounty of energy and a crazy sense of humor. And he had that same unmistakable carrot top with bangs hanging down into his eyes. For whatever reason, this handicapped kid intersected the bright path that all healthy kids are lucky enough to ride on. He interrupted an assumed trajectory we'd all taken for granted. It frightened or saddened or sobered my dad. Nothing is guaranteed, this child in a wheelchair seemed to be saying. That day changed my father's life.

The next day, Dad made a lot of calls. "I'd never done anything like that before, seeking out a stranger, but I had to, I felt drawn to him," my father explained. After calling Special Olympics headquarters and describing Mark's T-shirt and his red hair, my father was able to track down the family.

Mark's mother, Mary, seemed slightly worried during that first phone call. What kind of person would take such a sudden interest in her son? Dad explained that Mark reminded him of his nephew. Mary called back a few days later, while my father was at work, and asked my mother, Marcia, a few questions about my father, Paul. My mother assured her that my dad was OK.

My father visited Mark once a week for seven years, until our family moved away from the area. These visits had a certain ritual: Mark's family would order pizza. My father would put Mark in the car, and they'd go pick it up together.

"I knew your father wasn't having an affair," my mother said, "because every Wednesday night he came home with pizza in his hair."

Mark's father, a Vietnam veteran, had been exposed to Agent Orange. The family thought that might have contributed to Mark's disabilities: severe mental retardation, muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy.

"When I'd walk into the house, he'd be screaming," remembered my father. "He couldn't talk, but they had to hold him down because he was so glad, and thrashing around. It was just the best feeling."

I remember the sound of Mark screaming with joy very well. He and his family came to our house many times. And we followed a ritual of spending some of Christmas Day, year after year, with his family. Mark would pull my hair, and it would bring tears to my eyes. He would scream into my ear so my eardrum rattled. This was affection, Mark-style. Odd as it may sound, it became the highlight of our family's holiday. Visiting Mark was not about expensive cashmere gifts or false excitement for the latest Michael Jackson album. It was uncomfortable -- at first -- but it became something else, like a light flashed on in the middle of the night, a sudden search for meaning, sitting with this new "cousin" of mine, as the rest of my family marveled at my dad's joy.

"No matter how handicapped a kid is," Dad said, "there's somebody in there, and you get glimpses of that. What I found was that I got as much out of him as he got from me."

In 1992 my father retired and my parents moved up to New England. Now my father spends the better part of his retirement with kids: as a Big Brother, a literacy volunteer, a mentor to young boys without fathers. My mom had been doing volunteer work with emotionally disturbed and cerebral palsy kids for 20 years, and did it quietly and never lost hope -- or spoke about it. But my father is a salesman at heart, and loves to sell a concept. And it started back there at the end of a race that, according to the rules, everybody won.