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Nine-year-old Ryan Kyote
was eating breakfast
at home in Napa, Calif.,
when he saw the news: an
Indiana school had taken
a 6-year-old’s meal when
her lunch account didn’t
have enough money.
Kyote asked if that could
happen to his friends.
When his mom contacted
the school district to find
out, she learned that
students at schools in
their district had, all told,
as much as $25,000
in lunch debt. Although
the district says it never
penalized students who
owed, Kyote decided to
use his saved allowance
to pay off his grade’s debt,
about $74— becoming
the face of a movement
to end lunch-money debt.
When California Governor
Gavin Newsom signed a
bill in October that banned
“lunch shaming,” or giving
worse food to students
with debt, he thanked
Kyote for his “empathy
and his courage” in raising
awareness of the issue.
“Heroes,” Kyote points
out, “come in all ages.”
just standing on the street silently, in
shock,” he says. “I had the impression
like it was the end of the world.”
Indeed, that night was the end of
an era for a tight-knit group that had
worked together for years at Notre
Dame. As the months have gone by, the
memory has weighed on Prades, 44, who
has been at Notre Dame for
more than 20 years. Préaut still
has trouble sleeping. “There
is a trauma from the event
itself, from the hours that
I spent in the cathedral,”
Prades says. “There is
also the trauma of know-
ing what might have
happened.”
The two men are
among a handful of
A boy who helped
change the law on
school-lunch debt
people who have spent months working
in trailers in the cathedral’s backyard,
helping to prepare for the mammoth
reconstruction ahead. The treasures
and relics have been moved to a safe
room within the Louvre Museum, and
Notre Dame is wrapped in scaffold-
ing and plastic. It will be shut perhaps
until 2024, while its roof and spire
are rebuilt. Until then, its rav-
aged state is a daily reminder of
that terrifying night. “We
would be happy to turn the
page, to recover and go back
to normal life,” Préaut says.
When that time comes, the
relics will go home, to their
place of honor in a cathe-
dral that, against the odds,
still stands. □
The damaged
cathedral in June.
Below, Prades,
left, and Préaut
on Nov. 29
NOTRE DAME: PATRICK ZACHMANN—MAGNUM PHOTOS FOR TIME; PRADES AND PRÉAUT: WILLIAM DANIELS—PANOS FOR TIME; KYOTE: COURTESY KYLIE KIRKPATRICK
