COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Amid much laughter, story after story tumbled out as Katie Brosmer and Daijah Scott looked back on their 13-year friendship:
The time Scott took 45 minutes eating an ice-cream cone, had her first reluctant experience driving a car or played a cringe-worthy trumpet solo.
With the banter free and easy, the two giggled like schoolgirls.
One of them is Scott, a 17-year-old senior at St. Francis DeSales High School.
Brosmer, 63, could be her grandmother.
Instead, she has served as her “Big Sister” since 2002 through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program - in which adults are matched with children in mentoring relationships.
The length and depth of the relationship earned Brosmer recognition recently as Ohio Big Sister of the Year, awarded by a state association that considers nominees from 27 agencies.
“(Brosmer) really exemplifies what it is to … step out of that model of just being focused on herself and looking for an opportunity to enrich someone else’s life,” said Elizabeth Martinez, chief operating officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio.
“She has gone above and beyond.”
Brosmer, of the Clintonville neighborhood, has taken part in the program for 31 years.
Before being matched with Scott, she had two previous “Little Sisters.”
“Having a one-on-one mentoring relationship is important to me,” said Brosmer, a 39-year teacher at Bishop Watterson High School who is married with no children of her own.
“Bigs,” as they are called, are asked to supplement - not supplant - parents.
Scott has an older brother, Del-Vaunte, who was matched with a big - Michael Johnson of Columbus, who mentored him for eight years.
Their mother, single parent Connie Sylvester, has been thrilled with the results.
Del-Vaunte graduated in international studies from Bowling Green State University in 2014, and Daijah will head to North Carolina A&T State University in the fall.
“The bigs have been that significant other to Del-Vaunte and Daijah,” Sylvester said. “They were my support. Katie held one arm and Mike the other arm. They both held me up.”
Brosmer and Scott have shared much through the years.
At their first meeting, when they went to get ice cream, the 5-year-old Daijah took 45 minutes to eat a junior cone, “while mine was gone in five minutes,” Brosmer recalled, “and she’s just licking away, licking away.”
From there, the relationship included track meets, homework sessions and band concerts - not to mention an infamous rendition of Jingle Bells at Brosmer’s house not long after Daijah began playing trumpet in the sixth grade.
“She was like ’You did good,’ but I knew I did horrible,” said Scott, laughing. “But she still listened and sat through it.”
Brosmer, also laughing, said: “Oh, it was painful. But now you’re a beautiful trumpet player.”
Scott doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t have Brosmer in her life.
“I feel like I can talk to Katie about anything - just all of the little life challenges,” Scott said. “She’s always there to catch me when I fall.”
Their most treasured experiences have involved the expansive kitchen where Brosmer has a wooden block imprinted with designs to be pressed into dough to make springerle - German biscuits traditionally baked at Christmastime.
She inherited the block from her grandparents, who began making springerle in 1913.
Each year, whoever does the baking inscribes the year on the back of the board.
Scott and Brosmer have made the treats together since 2002.
Although the two plan to get together for baking even after Scott leaves for college, Brosmer acknowledges becoming teary-eyed when thinking about the impending departure.
Holding the springerle press, she said: “Daijah will get this when I can’t make them anymore. And after that, she can bring them to me when I’m in a nursing home - unless I can’t eat them because I don’t have any teeth.”
And the two laughed again.
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Information from: The Columbus Dispatch, https://www.dispatch.com
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