By Tanner Kent
Free Press Staff Writer
MANKATO —
Usually, Elizabeth Karp enjoys writing. But this year, she said, was a little different.
As the first four-time winner of Mankato’s Laws of Life essay contest, Karp has been a regular attendee at the annual banquet.
Now in its 11th year, Karp was one of six students who read their winning essays before a large crowd of family and fellow winners at Bethlehem Lutheran Church on Sunday.
Last year, she won for an essay about her grandfather’s recovery from a car accident. He was injured badly enough that family members weren’t sure if he’d make it. But he did, and Karp wrote about it.
This year, however, that same grandfather passed away. The same grandfather who encouraged Karp to work hard and be confident in herself. The same grandfather who wrote personalized letters to each grandchild at Christmas and who drew his last breath with Karp in arm’s reach.
When this year’s Laws of Life contest rolled around, Karp knew her topic immediately. But writing about such a painful — and profound — experience, she said, was almost as hard as sharing it before a crowd of people.
“I’m glad I got through it,” said Karp, a Mankato Loyola senior who earned a $500 third-place prize for the essay that nearly brought her to tears. “I wasn’t sure I would. All the emotions kind of hit me at once.”
The Laws of Life essay contest was founded by renowned investment expert Sir John Templeton in his native Tennessee in 1987 as a way to encourage young people to consider “their personal ideas and the law of life they value the most. Since then, the contest has spread so that more than 100 contests are now held worldwide.
Mankato’s contest, which is one of two in Minnesota, was founded by a handful of local community members who believed in the mission of the contest. Each year, 30 or more winning essays are awarded scholarships ranging from $50 to $1,000 — with funds provided by the family of Lowell and Nadine Andreas.
Mankato’s contest is open to all junior high and high school students, including those attending private schools and charter schools as well as those who are home schooled. This year’s contest received 117 submissions with each essay read at least twice and winning essays read again by two separate judges.
“It’s impressive every year,” said Frank Brandt, who sits on the Laws of Life committee and, along with Carl Schoenstedt, is one of its founders. “Year after year.”
Typically, Laws of Life essays are intensely personal and centered around a life lesson that is hard-earned.
Arianna Burnett, Dakota Meadows Middle School eighth-grader, learned a lesson about materialistic possessions during a mission trip to Jamaica. Mankato East eighth-grader Chandra Bouman learned to “never give up” from her trials as a competition swimmer. Loyola eighth-grader Elizabeth Piepho learned to not take love and life for granted through her parents’ experiences with cancer and her brother’s pending military deployment.
“The importance of our well-being,” Piepho wrote, “does not lie in the number of days or time we spend in this world, it is how we live our lives everyday to the fullest impacting the well-being of others.”
Mankato Loyola sophomore Allison Cannella learned about the fleeting nature of life after accompanying her neurosurgeon father to work and watching him deliver tragic news to a patient’s family. After seeing that family’s reaction to losing a loved one, Cannella wrote:
“In the end, regardless of how idle or how occupied we are, the true essence of happiness lies in our ability to appreciate and enjoy the simpler pleasures in life.”
And fellow Loyola sophomore Luke Hermer, who won the $1,000 top prize, learned a lesson about compassion while traveling to Guatemala on a medical mission trip. Playing soccer with the local youngsters and dispensing simple medications to impoverished and over-worked families made Hermer contemplate the blessings of his own existence.
“My eyes are now fully open to how the ‘other half’ of the world has to live,” he wrote, “and I feel a responsibility, as a representative of the part of the world that has so much, to help out that ‘other half’ which has so little.”
Those interested in donating to Laws of Life or volunteering can contact Schoenstedt at 507-345-3003.
