Train ride to Portland rewards good kids | Rudi and Corbin Alcott

By Rudi Alcott • May 3, 2011 3:46 pm
Eugene Montgomery helps children exit a train April 27 at the Tacoma Amtrak station as part of his KOSS program. The train ride rewards students for behaving and getting good grades.
Eugene Montgomery helps children exit a train April 27 at the Tacoma Amtrak station as part of his KOSS program. The train ride rewards students for behaving and getting good grades.

During the spring of each year, the seeds grow for one of Federal Way’s finest non-profits.

In April, these seeds sprout to give life to a number of well deserving kids from the Federal Way School District. These kids worked their tails off to read a book a month, get good grades, make good choices and otherwise prove to their individual teachers that they were worthy of an honor to ride a train to Portland with their peers.

For the past two years, I have taken each of my sons on this trip to extol the virtues as set forth. Their job is much the same as the KOSS Foundation sets, even though we reside in another school district. Additionally, each of my boys had to formulate a brief essay of what they learned on this trip.

Following are my son Corbin’s thoughts. These are his words and were not edited except for sentence structure and spelling.

I got to go on a train to Portland, Oregon, lead by the KOSS Foundation. KOSS means Keep Our Schools Safe. Led by Eugene Montgomery, he put it together to take under-privileged kids on a cool little trip. For them to be able to go, the kids had to have good grades and not do anything bad. Eugene has been doing it for 14 years. Eugene worked on the railroad for 30 years before retiring.

How I got to go is the same way, I had to do nothing bad and get good grades. Me and my Dad left at 8 a.m. and got home at 4 p.m. My Dad is the reason I got to go on that wonderful field trip that had nothing to do with the school I go to. What it was all about was taking kids with good grades on a rewarding field trip. The train we took was one of the Amtrak trains.

All in all, the kids were nice and I had a fun time helping them. I made lots of new friends, and I wish to keep on going and meeting new people. I learned if you’re good, good things will happen, so be good.

— By Corbin Alcott, age 12, Maple Valley, WA

We chaperoned the group of kids from Olympic View Elementary School. This year, several other schools from Federal Way and Northeast Tacoma had their day on the train. It is funded in part by BECU and Amtrak, but primarily by Montgomery himself. This is a non-profit that Federal Way should be proud to have. Please do your part to help fund this program. 100 percent of your proceeds go directly to this program. Contact Montgomery at (253) 815-8633.