Dorothy Reimers, 74, shared a long-forgotten injustice with her nieces when they were chatting during a recent summer visit.

Her principal had called her into his office a month before graduation during her senior year at Highland High School in Illinois. A four-year honors student, she had been nominated for the National Honor Society (NHS) -- but she wasn’t going to get in. The principal informed her that he was going to give the honor to a boy ranked lower than her because “it would help him on his resume,” she recalled.

Reimers was a shy girl who had grown up on a farm in the country, and didn’t question what the principal told her.

“I was ranked 12th in my high-school class,” she said.

After hearing the story, Anne-Christine Massullo, a superior court judge in San Francisco and Reimers’ niece by marriage, was flabbergasted.

“This makes me so upset for Aunt Dorothy,” she said. She and Reimers’ other nieces describe her as a giver -- a person who never asks for anything and has spent a life sacrificing for others. It’s hard for them, with successful careers, to remember that it wasn’t that long ago that a woman’s options were far more limited.

Reimers said she had never thought of the incident after it happened. But she did get a little teary when she shared the story for the first time. She had not gone to college -- never imagined it was a possibility -- and instead worked as a secretary for 20 years after she graduated. She eventually got married and took care of her husband after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

“She is wicked smart,” said her niece Laura Porter, a musician and business owner in Los Angeles. “We fantasize about everything she could have done with her life if she had even known it was possible.” They imagine she could have run a large corporation.

Later on in the visit, Massullo hatched a plan. She told Porter that she wanted to contact Highland High and ask officials to make their aunt a member of the honor society.

What was the worst that could happen?

The school’s guidance office secretary, Sarah Wiegman, answered when Massullo called in August. Wiegman went into the school’s storage room and pulled the files with old student transcripts. Her research confirmed that Reimers had met the criteria -- and had, indeed, been ranked higher than the boy who was inducted into the NHS back in 1962. She referred the case to the school’s NHS adviser, who presented the facts to NHS senior officers.

They unanimously voted to induct Reimers into the organization as an honorary member.

The nieces decided to surprise their aunt on Thanksgiving with the certificate. First, they asked her to retell the story for the family members gathered.

When Massullo pulled out the certificate, Reimers burst into tears.

“You did this for me?” she asked. Her older brother, now 81, was also crying.

They told her they did it because they love her. And also because she had earned it.

“Nobody had the right to take that from me,” she said, with a hard-earned wisdom. “I worked for that.” Reimers said that if the same thing happened today, when she’s older and wiser, she would never stand for it.

She wonders what happened to the boy who received the honor meant for her. The principal had taken more than an award from her; he had told her that her achievements should benefit a boy. That the boy’s future mattered far more than hers. Reimers lost out on a milestone academic achievement and the possibilities that could have come with it.

“It was stolen from her in that moment,” Porter said.

More than 56 years later, they made sure she got it back.

A queen-sized mattress takes up most of the living room floor. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in the front door. It’s draped with blue sheets and surrounded by the larger furniture on three sides, creating an island in the middle of the room. Plush toys sit next to remotes. Pillows are scattered throughout the space, and medical supplies are stacked on the sides of the mattress.

Kyle, 37, and Indy Walsh, 39, have lived out of this room for the past year. Their 4-year-old son, Kyler, has a brand-new nursery in their three-bedroom ranch house in St. Charles.

It’s never been used.

Indy had noticed seizures when Kyler was 3 or 4 months old. When he was 6 months old, doctors diagnosed him with a rare genetic disorder called FOXG1 syndrome, in which a genetic mutation causes brain abnormalities and severely impairs development. Kyler is nonverbal, unable to lift his head or support his own weight, and likely has the cognitive function of a 6-month-old. He is fed through a gastrostomy tube and requires 24-hour care. He has spent months in the hospital, since even a cold can turn life-threatening for him. About 260 people have this mutation worldwide.

One of his parents sleeps on the mattress on the floor with him every night. He used to sleep in the bed with one of them, until they worried he might roll over and fall off. On this icy night in November, it’s his grandmother, Cindy Ryon, staying with him on the mattress, waiting for his parents to return from the hospital.

Indy was shocked to learn in April that she had gotten pregnant again. She has a variation of the gene mutation that affects her ability to carry a baby to term. She had three miscarriages before Kyler was born, and two miscarriages after him.

Her oldest child, 17-year-old Ashlynn, has a different form of the genetic mutation that doesn’t cause the syndrome her brother has. When Ashlynn heard about her mother’s pregnancy, her first thought was, “Oh gosh, we’re gonna be under stress again that I’m going to have to deal with.”

The family operates under high levels of stress. Indy was fired from her job as a manager at Walmart after Kyler was diagnosed. Kyle runs his own painting business with his brother. They don’t qualify for state aid for Kyler’s medical expenses, so they are constantly juggling bills and negotiating with insurance companies. Once, the electricity was cut off during one of his extended hospital stays.

Indy, whose days and nights are spent caring for her severely disabled son, was on pins and needles during her pregnancy, wondering if their next baby would have the same mutation. Ashlynn and Kyler share the same October birth date, but Kameron wasn’t due until Dec. 9.

Then at 33 weeks, she went into preterm labor. The doctors stopped the labor, kept her in the hospital for four days and sent her home on bed rest. The next day, Indy started bleeding. She called her husband and said he needed to come home right away.

Painful contractions hit every two to three minutes during the car ride to the hospital. She was bleeding profusely. Doctors discovered her placenta was breaking away from uterine wall. She was hemorrhaging, and too unstable to transfer to a larger, better-equipped facility in St. Louis.

An ambulance whisked Kameron to St. Louis Children’s Hospital soon after he was born. He would spend 23 days in the neonatal intensive care unit while his parents waited for the results of the medical tests. It was too risky to bring Kyler to the hospital to meet his new brother.

Tonight, the Walshes were going to bring their baby home, and the brothers would meet.

Kyle laid Kameron down next to Kyler. Ashlynn stayed on the top of the mattress, above the 6-pound infant in a fuzzy bodysuit covered with blue and gray snowflakes.

“Look at him. Look at him, babe,” Kyle said to his wife. “He’s talking to him.” Indy was busy unpacking newborn diapers the size of an adult hand. “That can all wait,” her husband said. “You should watch this.”

The brothers lay face-to-face on the mattress. Kyler gurgled and made eye contact with the baby for a brief moment.

Kyle recorded a video on his phone.

Indy started talking to her older son.

“Who is that, Kyler? Is that your little baby brother? Mommy’s been telling you about him.”

She reached over to put lip balm on Kyler’s dry lips.

They are hoping the new baby will help Kyler learn and develop.

Kameron’s test results were clear. He didn’t share either genetic mutation that his siblings have.

He does, however, share one thing with Ashlynn and Kyler: the same Oct. 23 birthday.

We teach young children to consider the feelings of others in the hopes that they will grow to become empathetic adults. And yet, the glaring absence of empathy among adults is on display every day in news reports and social media feeds.

Psychological research has documented a dramatic decline in self-reported empathy over the past three decades. Researchers suggest this growing empathy deficit may be fueled by several factors, including chronic stress and isolation by social class.

When I think about the experiences that have helped me break down my assumptions and increase my capacity for understanding, I wonder if we have been teaching empathy all wrong. Often, we tell children how another person might feel or react in a given situation, but the most powerful lessons come from listening, witnessing and doing. Perhaps we have to let children experience more of what we want to protect them from. Perhaps those experiences are what make them stronger and kinder.

These are the experiences that have most impacted my ability to empathize:

1. Spending time in a place that unsettled me. As a young reporter, I spent two months in a summer school session observing a gifted teacher trying to help remedial elementary school students learn how to read. The students lived in one of the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods in our metro area. Those months completely changed the way I thought about poverty in this country. It’s one thing to read about extreme poverty in America; it’s another to witness it for longer than a short visit. I’ve often wondered what would happen if every middle class and wealthy American had to spend a few weeks in the same environment as a child born into extreme poverty. How would this change our policy debates?

2. Listening to stories. I’ve met refugee families from all parts of the world. Listening to their stories of the lives they left behind and how they got here made debates about immigration more personal and real.

3. Teaching. It wasn’t until I spent an entire day teaching middle-schoolers that I truly appreciated how difficult that job is. I’m having the same perspective-changing experience by teaching writing to college freshman this semester. I have always admired teachers, but until I experienced their challenges firsthand, I didn’t really know what a toll it takes.

4. Witnessing grief. The hardest days of my job have been when I’ve talked to parents who had lost their children to accidents, illness or criminal acts. I have cried with anguished parents. Hearing and holding another person’s grief teaches you about loss, which teaches you about how to live.

5. Holding a hand. A friend called me after she had been violently raped. I drove her to a hospital, saw her bruises and held her hand. Sometimes all you can do for someone shattered by trauma is to show up -- repeatedly, consistently.

6. Traveling to less developed parts of the world. Before I could afford to travel, I read books that took me into other people’s lives and places. Literature has been shown to increase our empathy.

7. Experiencing profound loss. When you have firsthand experience of what it’s like to lose something precious -- a loved one, a desperately wanted pregnancy, your health, your home -- it inevitably changes you. The people I most admire find a way to channel that pain into compassion. I’ve tried to follow their example.

8. Making it personal. Even when you know something intellectually -- such as the fact that it’s incredibly difficult to leave an abusive relationship -- hearing it from a person who has lived through it adds texture and dimension to your understanding. That’s how I’ve felt when I’ve listened to the experiences of very successful women who stayed in abusive relationships until they were able to get out. Or loved someone brilliant who struggles with addiction. It’s harder to judge when you know people who have walked through the fire.

The more we can do to help ourselves -- and our children -- become more compassionate, aware and thoughtful, the better the world we can create.