Saluting Mya M. Martinez, Who Was So Patient During Atlas Charity Dinner

For fear of getting nothing but coal lumps in my stocking, I must make amends, to a sweet little girl named Mya M. Martinez.

Ms. Martinez, age 10, was kind enough to listen to my babble and watch me smear too much butter on too many rolls at the Nov. 20 Teddy Atlas charity fundraiser dinner on Staten Island. She laughed politely at my corny jokes, and generally, with her gentle demeanor and polite attention given during what had to be a bit of a BORING outing for a kid, impressed the heck out of me.

I sat at a table with friends Keith Sullivan and James Galleshaw, good-guy attorneys with offices in Manhattan and Queens, and an associate at their firm, Ricardo Martinez brought his daughter May to the gala.

As I spoke to her, and noted her poise and the sweet interaction between her and her dad, I told her that she’d make it into my writeup of the night. Then, life swooped in, and my idiocy did too. I misplaced my notes from the dinner. And then I received a thorough write-up on the dinner from the esteemed Bernard Fernandez. And the Mya mention fell between the cracks.

Not acceptable.

You make a promise to a kid, you best live up to that, threat of coal or not.

So, I salute you Mya M. Martinez, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn resident who attends PS 101, the Verrazano School, for making that dinner that much better.

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