By Rob Scott
NORTHUMBERLAND -- When Norma Jean Ekey-Brobyn picked up a copy of Ladies' Home Journal in the waiting room at Geisinger Medical Center 5 years ago, she had no idea it would be a life-changing experience.
As she flipped through the pages, she came upon an article titled "The Woman Who Loved Children," about a Polish social worker who had saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis during World War II.
Irena Sendler was part of an underground group, Zegota, that smuggled the children out of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Sendler's story went largely untold for a half century until a group of high school girls in Fort Scott, Kan., stumbled upon it while working on a class project in 1999.
Their project launched a play, "Life In A Jar," depicting Sendler's story that has been put on more than 270 times in the last decade.
Reading about Sendler and the girls who exposed her story to the rest of the world, Ekey-Brobyn, 84, was especially touched because she too grew up in Kansas, in a town not far from Fort Scott.
"I thought Irena Sendler's work and what she did was so courageous," said Ekey-Brobyn, of Bloomsburg, after speaking at the Nottingham Village Retirement Center Wednesday afternoon. "And also the fact that my Kansas roots had developed these young women. ... I just kind of identified with them."
Ekey-Brobyn visited the play's Web site, www.irenasendler.org, and got in touch with the teacher who had originally assigned the girls the project that led them to Sendler.
The 84-year-old volunteered her services to spread Sendler's story and act as an unpaid spokesperson for the play. Five years later, she's finally been able to score a premiere in the Susquehanna Valley.
Students from Uniontown High School, near Fort Scott, Kan. -- who have carried on the legacy of the original group of girls in putting on the play -- will visit Bloomsburg and Danville in November.
"It makes me feel good to finally share a story (locally) that has finally been told," said Ekey-Brobyn.
"Life In A Jar" will be put on at 6 p.m. Nov. 6 at Bloomsburg High School. There will be two shows on Nov. 7, at 1 p.m. at Trinity United Methodist Church in Danville and at 7 p.m. at Wesley United Methodist Church in Bloomsburg.
The shows are free and open to the public.
n E-mail comments to rscott@dailyitem.com.
