Humans of Libertyville

Paige Ward“I’m really big on equal rights. I go to a unitarian universalist church, so my youth group is entirely people that are transgender, people that are gay, like my best friend is gay. I have a brother with special needs, so seeing other people around me not have the same rights as me or even seeing myself not having the same rights as others is just a travesty. I just want everyone to be ...

Paige Ward“It was the end of my freshmen year, and my brother had some personal issues at college, so he had to come home. It was issues with mental illness, and it really had a big impact on my family because we had never experienced anything like that before. Learning how to deal with that as a family and then seeing him at the lowest point was really hard to see and he’s my older brother...S...

Paige Ward“The transition [from Mexico to America] was a little difficult for me, simply because you don’t know the system and you don’t know the culture. There is definitely a language barrier, but I think it is more about not knowing the system. If you have someone who is helping you navigate the system, it is a lot easier to get from point A to point B. For me, I had to ask a lot about the...

Paige Ward“Last summer my team won the state championship for club [soccer], and it was just really cool. All our hard work paid off. When we hoisted the trophy, that was the moment of realization that we’d actually won, and I think that might have been the happiest moment of my life.” ...

Paige Ward“I am really passionate about social justice. It’s a big part of everything I do. I’m the chair for the National Association of Social Workers and the chair for the Social Justice and Economic Peace committee. So, we do a lot of educating other social workers, who also work in social justice on current issues coming up in social justice, best practices in working in social justice ...

Sam Nelson“[I want my legacy to be that] I really enjoyed life, and my grandchild...I’ve got a few things I want to do [when I retire in a few years]: travel, go camping; I plan on buying a camper and attach[ing] it to my truck, so I can do what my brother is doing right now, spending the winter in Arizona.”  ...

Sam Nelson“[The happiest moment about having my company (4044) was] definitely when I got random people across the country to buy my clothes because I didn’t have influence on them. It was [that] they saw my clothing and they liked it and then they bought it, and that was really cool to me.”...

Sam Nelson“We get so much help from the school community and our neighbors with the triplets, and it’s been just amazing. That might be the most amazing thing about having the triplets too, is the incredible outpouring of support that we got from the school community and also our neighborhood, and that’s just been so overwhelming, how many people that have been willing to help us with meals and coming over j...

“In England (which I had moved to from America), halfway through the year, granted, I was new and I was in the middle of the school year, and I walked into class and I was obviously scared, and the first thing they asked me was what soccer team I supported and coming from America, I didn’t know very many soccer teams. But before I moved, my friend Dylan had given me a Liverpool jersey and so I...

Sam Nelson“I remember the transition pretty well because a couple weeks beforehand, my dad was talking to me about going to the U.S (from Brazil), and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty cool,’ but I didn’t really know what the U.S. was because I was like 4...I really only thought Brazil was the only country, like, ever; I remember the first time going to the U.S., and I was at the airport with everyo...

“The way people saw things, viewed things, and had opinions that weren’t necessarily mine, that took some getting used to but ultimately it was rewarding because looking back, I think it's the reason that I’m really open-minded to a lot of different views because I had to spend my teenage years listening to people who were not like me and listening to opinions that were different from mine. I ca...

Maria Thames “I have been to about 17 different places, [including] a lot of places in the Caribbean, and a lot of places that are more remote and not commercialized. I like being able to experience different cultures and visiting places that are different from here.”...

“I moved from Serbia when I was 4 with my parents so I could get a better education, better lifestyle. It is a kind of a backwards country there. My dad was a U.S. citizen, which made me a U.S. citizen and reap the fruits of success.”

Maria Thames“What am I currently passionate about? Right now, I know as cheesy as it sounds, [it’s] making a difference. Being a Muslim in this day and age, it’s [often] people's first experience meeting a Muslim, or you know, their first interaction with a Muslim, so [I’m focused on] making myself look good.” ...

Maria Thames“So everyone has their passion from their childhood and mine was business. My parents and grandparents, especially my grandmother, they were all businessmen and businesswomen. And before I had [my current] business, I had an organization. So what it does is millions of people donate books, which are no use to them [anymore] and then I send them to children who need them and also can't afford them. I have a goal of ten million ...

“My friends and family make me happy. I have three children; they make me happy. I’ve been married for 34 years. Going to our place up north in Wisconsin, that is my happy place. We have four-wheelers, pontoon boats; it takes us about three and a half hours to get there. I love the deer up there. I love my grandson; he makes me very happy. Watching my son play volleyball is another thing that makes me...

“[The best part of learning piano is] probably getting to share the music with someone else because you spend all this time practicing by yourself and when you finally get to perform [pieces] for people, it’s cool to see people react to them and see how they like it.”

“It’s mostly that my life revolves around my artwork. Every day I look forward to art, my art classes that I have [twice] a day. I sometimes go in during my lunch and I have a study hall, so I’m in the art room around a good half of the day. I deal with anxiety and depression and stuff like that, and it helps me escape from that, if that makes sense. I just put all of that into making a piece...

“So our main work project [in Cambodia] was we were building a pavement area around one of the schools. You dumped a whole bunch of sand on the ground and then you have these little hexagon cement things you have to hammer in, so that was our main project every day. It was super hot, we’re sweating, I have blisters all over my hands and it was really hard work, but then all of a sudden, the bell...

“My parents inspire me to do better every time I step out on the [tennis] court. Because I see all the hard work they do for me and my other siblings, when I win or play my best that I can possibly play, it’s my way of thanking them for everything they have done for me.”

“Last summer I went away to work in Yellowstone for six weeks. I worked through the youth conservation core and it was just an incredible experience. It was super awesome, definitely unlike another thing I’ve ever done before. Hopefully I will be able to continue doing something like that. This summer, I’m looking at a couple conservation cores around the country. There is one in Minnesota I’ve...

“Mission work has always been a big part of my life and I guess I’ve never felt more joy than knowing I helped someone or made a difference in someone’s life. I just feel like if I could help in a third-world country, I’d make such a difference, even if it’s just in one person’s life and it doesn’t affect the world. It’s the world for that one person and that means more to me than anything.”

“I want to do great things. I guess that I aspire for greatness in [astronomy] because I want to set an example for other women who want to be strong in science. We need more women in science, and we need their different perspective on everything. Men were the only people who were allowed to work on the Apollo Missions, for example. That new movie, ‘Hidden Figures,’ we need more women like that,...

Paige Ward”There was a book I read called ‘Outliers’...In the book, it addressed societal issues and certain ways we think...It made me think differently about how people view each other and the world in general, and just what makes certain people different from other people. It’s not just their skin color or their gender. There are certain ways people think that makes them different from eac...