Give Your May Flowers Super Natural Powers

only postponing the inevitable. But I just couldn’t let the axe fall. There was something different about these two ... They had earned the right to a little more time to prove themselves.”

So each day Richard and his friend walked to the courts by their apartment and played, with rackets on loan, until the lights went off at 10 or 11 p.m.

After dark, they analyzed YouTube clips of Roger Federer and Andre Agassi.

They returned the next week with “remarkably improved mechanics,” Williams says. Amazed, he and the assistant coach agreed — the boys had earned a spot on the team.

Four years later, Richard is ranked second on the Wildcat varsity tennis team and is team captain — the squad earned a place in the all-region tournament last year and is on track to do the same again. One night, after Richard won a particularly tough match, his teammates lifted him to their shoulders and carried him around the court while shouting, “Richard! Richard! Richard!”

When Richard was a child in Myanmar, then Burma, his father fled to America, assisted by a smuggler.

“He nearly died — several of his traveling companions did,” Richard says.

Richard and his mother moved in with an aunt in the city’s capital, but Richard says the woman took advantage of their inability to speak the country’s official language and pocketed the money Richard’s father sent for schooling.

So, during his formative adolescent years, Richard went three years without school. He used the time to self-learn the official Burmese language, and he and his mom moved away from his officious relative, Richard says.

“It was the best feeling we ever had,” says Richard of the day he and his mom finally gained entry to the United States, via a refugee program and a helpful uncle, a pastor at Dallas’ Chin Revival Church. They did not know any English, but Richard studied the dictionary furiously and became fluent within a year.

He still felt awkward speaking English and found it hard to make friends noting his brilliant smile and infectious affability, it is difficult to imagine.

Today there is a large population of Burmese refugees in the Wallace Elementary School zone, but his family was among the first, so it was lonely.

Because Richard remembers what it felt like to feel completely lost, he is determined to help others in the same predicament.

“I will help people fill out job applications, insurance papers, go with them to their bank …” He says he thinks it especially important to help immigrants figure out finances, so they can become independent and not a victim to those who would take advantage.

Thus, his plan after graduation is to study finance at one of several universities to which he has already been accepted, including University of Texas at Arlington and Texas A&M Commerce.

His parents’ sacrifices drive him. “My dad risked his life. He came to America so I would have a chance at an education. In my country there is no way for a poor person to go to high school, college. My parents were unable to finish school, but it is all they want for me,” he says. “I have applied for every scholarship. I know I have been given this great opportunity and I will do everything I can to meet the challenge.”