Kindness rocks: How one child sparked a mental health discussion in Mount Airy

Story by Sara Pequeño

The last day of Vincent Puckett’s life was a Monday.

His sister Lily drove him to school, as usual. His stepdad, Cary Cann, was out of town, so they didn’t drink coffee on the porch as they always do. His mother reminded Vincent to ask his sister to take him to Staples, so he could get a new modem. She didn’t tell him “I love you.”

Vincent didn’t take his tuba home from band class. He didn’t stop by Staples. He left his grey Vans hoodie on a chair in the living room. He sent a text to his friend Freri.

On May 1, 2017, Vincent Wayne Puckett took his life on his family’s property. He was 14 years old.

“No mother should have to give their child CPR,” his mother, Roxane Cann, said. “No mother should have to see their child taken away on a gurney, and you’re not going to see him after that. No mother should have to take their son out of a tree.”

Roxane and Cary Cann created Vincent Puckett’s Kindness Legacy to honor their son, and ensure that parents and their children know the resources available when dealing with mental illness, as well as bullying. The hope is that Vincent will be immortal, and that no mother will feel the way Roxane did on that day.

Vincent’s Legacy has worked alongside Mount Airy City Schools to implement changes in how mental health and social relationships are handled. The district’s website features a Google form for students to submit any interaction that makes them feel unsafe. A social and emotional task force, created May 2, 2017, helps provide mental health first aid and therapy to students  at no cost to the parents.

Superintendent Kim Morrison believes that this has given the school system a way to assess mental health in a better way, through its partnerships with healthcare providers Aramark and Partners.

“I think teachers really wanted to help children, but they didn’t have the tools,” Morrison said. “They didn’t have the behavioral team, they didn’t have the support. I think teachers feel better that they’re able to do something.”

Vincent’s Legacy has also put rock gardens in each of the four schools. The rocks came into play the summer after his death. Roxane’s sister started painting rocks with Lily when she came for the funeral. Pretty soon, they were hiding them around town.

A Facebook group named “Vincent’s Legacy, Kindness Rocks, #vwplegacy” was created June 2, 2017. There, people post pictures of rocks they’ve painted, hidden or found. The Facebook group currently has 2,323 members. Roxane says there are rocks in 44 states, and some in Iceland, China and Italy. People ask for rocks before trips, so that they can hide them.

“Every day, I see more rocks around the world, and I see Vincent travelling,” Roxane said. “I know that it can’t be stopped, and I don’t want it to. And I don’t think that Vincent wants it to.”

Roxane and Cary Cann are sitting in the Vincent Puckett’s Kindness Legacy headquarters, a second story storefront in downtown Mount Airy. Blue wooden bookshelves hold pieces of Vincent — plush monsters from the children’s book “Where The Wild Things Are,” photographs, and books that he had read. The headquarters provides support to parents and their children, who are able to visit and talk with Roxane through appointment. It opened on Jan. 27.

The Canns often spend time with children in afterschool programs, painting rocks to add to their gardens, reading them “The Sneeches” by Dr. Seuss and teaching them kindness. Their favorite times have been at B. H. Tharrington Primary School, which houses kindergarten through 2nd grade.

“When they’re at that age they’re so moldable, and they’re just little sponges,” Roxane said. “They just see this knowledge and soak it up, and you just want to teach them nothing but kindness and happiness. And then the world takes hold.”

While Roxane does not tell the youngest students why Vincent died, she has been more straightforward with older students, as well as parents. She spoke at Piney Grove Middle School in Lawsonville in October, where the principal asked her to be  “in their face” about the effects of bullying.

“These children need to know that there is someone who cares, and that they have a support system,” Roxane said. “I feel like that’s what we’re here for, to be another outlet for children and parents, and to be a voice. That these kids can hear about Vincent’s story and know it’s OK to feel the way that you’re feeling and it’s OK to not keep it bottled up inside. I feel like that’s what Vincent’s purpose is and was, is to make a difference and make an impact.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Roxane asked.

She was praying outside their family home on the cul-de-sac. It was the day after Vincent’s death. The family had been bombarded with visitors the night before – word travels fast in a small town.

The answer that washed over her was simple: “Choose kindness. Move forward.”

Turning the other cheek was a struggle for Vincent. Cary said he began getting targeted by his classmates in fifth grade, as he was standing in the lunch line and overheard a group of students picking on another child because he was gay. When he stood up for the other child, the insults turned to him.

“They thought that him standing up meant he was gay,” said Cary. “It got to the point that he would just say, ‘OK, I am. So what?’”

“Whether he was or wasn’t wasn’t the point,” said Roxane. “The point was that he had a voice and wanted to use that voice.”

The bullying continued into middle school. Vincent would get so frustrated that he would throw his backpack down in the guidance counselor’s office, and tell them he couldn’t take it anymore. The school administration promised something would get done. The Canns say that little actually went into effect.

“He was really starting to lose a lot of faith in adults and authority because the principal would say ‘It’s not going to happen anymore,’” Roxane said. “And it continued to get worse.”

It escalated to the point of self harm, and culminated in a suicide attempt when Vincent was in 7th grade. He was hospitalized several times after that, and was ultimately pulled out of school to begin homebound teaching.

“He was probably the youngest version of Jay Gatsby that I’d ever met,” said Shelli Owens, an English teacher at Mount Airy High School. “He had this undeniable hope for humanity that often disappointed him, but he just kept right on hoping.”

Owens  was working with him to reintegrate him to the classroom. She says that like most children, he preferred to study subjects he wanted to, as opposed to the standard school curriculum.

“He really was fascinated by how people behaved, and how people reacted in certain situations,” Owens said. “We spent a lot of time looking at specific novels that would relate to that.”

They would talk about Nietzsche and world issues. Occasionally, he would reference his bullying and his depression, but only in terms of literature.

In 7th grade, the Canns had Vincent’s IQ tested. He scored 174 – putting him in the top 1 percent worldwide. They decided it would be best to have him move into 9th grade, and to begin taking band class. Morrison, a former band teacher, suggested it.

“He just needed someone to craft a special place for him,” said Morrison.

Vincent flourished in the high school, his parents said. He kept making straight A’s. He taught himself to play guitar and piano and was learning to play the tuba. His parents attribute this newfound love of music to fellow band student Phillip Daniels.

“Phillip just took him under his wing and pulled this love of music that he didn’t know he had,” Roxane said. Daniels, now a senior at Mount Airy High School, remembers Vincent as someone who he could talk about “anything and everything” with. Another student, Freri Rodriguez, would stay up late with Vincent playing XBox games until they were forced to go to bed.

Despite this progress, Vincent still suffered from his past. He had PTSD and anxiety. He had recently expressed worry about driver’s ed – a class he would have to take with the students he left behind.

To this day, there is still mystery clouding May 1. Lily is the last one who saw him, and she refuses to talk about it. Her parents believe that she blames herself for his passing, and it shows in her artwork.

Lily is a senior at Mount Airy High School, and is applying to colleges around the state. This change in their household leaves the Canns to think – who will they become after all of this change?

“All we can do is become new people, and sometimes that’s so scary, knowing this way that was so comfortable for so long, and we can’t get back to that comfort zone,” Cary said. “It’s been a year and a half, almost 2 years, and we’re not back to normal.”

It seems they have found their new normal through Vincent’s Legacy. They hope that through it, their son can live forever.

Owens sits on the social and emotional task force, and notes that it grows with every meeting.

“I have always been hyper-aware of my students and their socio-emotional needs, but I think his departure heightened my resolve to make sure that was more important than whether they could make a decision between A, B, C, or D,” Owens said. “And I refuse to compromise on it now.”

There is a photo on Cary and Roxane’s shared Facebook profile of Vincent holding a fishing rod in a boat, gaze focused off camera at the ocean waters shifting around him. The photo was shared six days after his passing.

“How lucky am I to be his mom, how blessed am I to call him my own,” Roxane said in the post. “He who could not be contained in this world any longer, who’s mind was so brilliant that he had learned all there was and so he burst into flight and soars above us, saying ‘aren’t we more alike than different.’ He is the bird that flies free and we have only to listen to the song he sings.”