Pat Gordon is the proprietor of Pat’s Trim & Style in Aberdeen — but at Robert Gray Elementary School, she’s affectionately known as “the Pizza Lady.”

Every Monday of the school year, during her lunch hour, she hosts a small pizza party for six students — but it’s not a reward for high achievers, or a celebration of anything in particular. Instead, it’s meant as a morale booster.

“She has very specific expectations about the students that the teachers recommend,” said Noelani Butcher, the school’s counselor. “She doesn’t want the teacher’s pet, or the ones that are always doing a great job. She wants the kids that are having trouble making friends, that have self-esteem problems, or maybe have a little bit of a behavior problem.”

This way, the students are seen in a positive light as they invite five others to join them for pizza at the first table in the cafeteria.

“It’s really amazing, because some of the kids will invite who they want to be like, if they’re behavior kids,” said Butcher. “Or they’ll have really good insight and invite other kids that need friends.”

This week, six members of Patricia Timmons’ kindergarten class participated. The two boys and four girls were all kinds of excited to be at the head table. Some called out and waved to passing classmates, while others focused 100 percent on the food — and, of course, the prize drawings.

Butcher tears napkins into six small pieces at a time and writes notes on them, then crumples them into balls. Each child picks one, and they get whatever’s written there: an extra piece of pizza or dessert, or a certain number of bills of the school’s currency, which they can use to purchase items from the school store.

Gordon said the idea began to form about 30 years ago, when she learned of a new black student at Washington Elementary in Hoquiam who was having trouble assimilating.

So she became the girl’s “lunch buddy,” eating with her regularly for that whole school year. “By the end of the year, she was one of the most popular kids in school.”

Later, Gordon expanded her reach to give other kids at Washington the opportunity to be stars for a day.

After several years, she met a Robert Gray first-grader who had lost her hair to alopecia areata. She said the girl was having self-esteem issues because of her affliction, and was painfully shy.

“She wouldn’t talk. She wouldn’t look at anybody. She wore a stocking cap all the time and had been teased,” said Gordon.

After fitting the girl with a wig at her shop, Gordon became her pizza buddy — “and by the third week, she was in detention for talking too much!” she laughed. “So I told the counselor my job was done; I’d ruined her for them.”

She has been the Pizza Lady at Robert Gray for 20 years since then.

“Mrs. Butcher is the best counselor I’ve worked with,” said Gordon. “She really knows who to pick, and who needs that extra attention; so it just works.”

It’s a fairly pricey endeavor.

“I probably spend about $30 a week for the pizza and the drinks and the extras,” she said — and that’s not counting the end-of-year party she throws for the entire sixth-grade class. “I can’t even imagine how much that is every year, so I’m not gonna go there!”

Every penny is worth it to Gordon, as she can see positive results every time she visits.

“What’s really neat is I walk down the hall and see different kids that I’ve had before,” she said. “Before (their pizza party), their heads were down; they were walking by themselves. And now I see them hand in hand with a buddy.”

She said the biggest reason she continues to do it is she can relate to these children.

“I was teased when I was in school, and there was nothing like this to make it easier for me. I know what it feels like to be the last one in the group to be picked,” she said.

“This way, the last one to be picked gets to do the picking.”

Kat Bryant | The Daily World Pat Gordon, proprietor of Pat’s Trim & Style, has been hosting weekly pizza parties for children at Robert Gray Elementary for 20 years.