Inspiring Dad Leads Uplifting March Against Bullying—Spreading Kindness at His Daughters’ School

As they gathered around the dinner table, Steve Mandile asked his daughters Abby and Ella, then 11 and 9, how their day at school had gone.

Abby sighed, then shared that some of her friends were being bullied. “The bigger kids make fun of their clothes and how they look.”

“Are you guys being bullied?” Steve and their mom, Jessica, asked, and the girls shook their heads.

“No…not yet,” Abby said, and Steve wondered if there was something he could do to help.

Steve is an Uxbridge, Massachusetts, selectman. He helps make the town’s laws and regulations. But he knew bullying wasn’t something you could make go away with a new law.

Steve is also a disabled Army vet. He fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he suffered PTSD and severe back injuries. But, with the help of various veterans organizations and counseling, he pulled his life together. But there were so many vets still suffering, so Steve had joined in a march at the state capital building.

Help Our Vets! read their signs, and they had made a real difference. All day, passersby stopped to listen to Steve and the others describe the problems and possible solutions, and most left with a better understanding of the plight of wounded warriors.

“I wonder if that would work here?” Steve asked his wife.

The next morning, when Steve drove the girls to school, he parked the car and as the girls headed toward the school entrance, Steve retrieved the sign he’d created. Choose Kindness Always! it declared and, with his daughters’ okay, he walked back and forth in front of the school until the bell rang and classes began.

Steve marched with the sign the next morning, and the morning after that, splitting his time between Whitin Intermediate School and the adjacent Taft Early Learning Center. “It’s wonderful what you’re doing,” parents smiled and offered a thumbs-up as they dropped off their kids.

The next week, Jessica joined her husband. So did several other parents.

“It’s the Kindness Guy!” students waved.

“My friends think you’re great,” Abby hugged her dad.

“It’s not cool to be a bully anymore,” added Ella.

One of the parents who often joins Steve is former school counselor and mom of three Kara Guy. “I see the smiles on the kids’ faces when they spot Steve and others carrying signs,” she says. “Their positive messages can be very comforting to a child who’s had a tough morning and doesn’t arrive at school in the best of moods.”

Steve rotates between different signs. “My favorite is, Be a buddy, not a bully,” says Taft Early Learning Center teacher Sarah Mason Douglas. “Kids usually know what they’re not supposed to do, but not what they should do instead.”

Steve has carried his message of kindness nearly every day for over two and a half years, and he has no plans to stop. “You can never go wrong with kindness,” he smiles. “Kindness is always the right choice.”

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