More than 20 years had passed before dance teacher Pamela Black heard from Aurora resident Thelma Lindsey, but she remembered her former student right away.
“She was a brat,” Black said of Lindsey. “I didn’t consider her a bad child, but I didn’t really know she liked dance that much.”
Lindsey, a thirtysomething Chicago native, liked it so much that she took what she learned in the Chicago Park District’s Stateway Gardens Field House and opened the world of dance to children first in Madison, Wis., then in Aurora.
“When I got older, I wanted to give back to the community. I thought about what was taught to me as a child, and I started teaching tap and hip-hop to underprivileged kids,” Lindsey said.
So when she staged her first local recital Aug. 25 at the Aurora Township Youth and Community Center, her greatest wish was for Pamela Black to be in the audience.
And she was.
“You never know the impact you have on children unless they tell you,” said Black, who retired from the Chicago Park District this year after some 35 years.
“What I like is that Thelma has taken the skills she’s learned throughout life to the next step.”
Lindsey teaches students at the community center, but she also rents space there to run her Christian dance endeavor, Order my Steps Dance Academy.
“I’m good at what I do, and it’s all because of what Miss Pamela Black instilled in my life as a child,” Lindsey said.
Black, who now teaches physical education for the Chicago Public Schools, said although she taught dance, the Park District philosophy was to “develop the whole child.”
Lindsey said that philosophy worked for her in a big way.
“I was one of the kids that would get on Miss Black’s nerves sometimes,” said Lindsey, who began dancing at age 7.
But “out of all the kids, I came back to carry the mantle,” said Lindsey.
