(Editor’s Note: A version of this column originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2010.)

On the last day of her family’s spring break, Sharon Dunski Vermont confronted an ugly truth: Her tween-aged daughters were close to becoming spoiled brats. They had spent the day out with friends and decided to get ice cream. Vermont told them in the car that they would be getting child-sized scoops. Her older daughter said that wasn’t fair. In the store, she got more irate and had a meltdown.

"As she was having the fit I was mortified," Vermont said. To her, the fit was about something bigger. It was about the fact that her children, who got most of the things they asked for, did not appreciate what their parents did for them and everything they had.

"This was a growing theme in our family: more, bigger, better, more clothes, more electronics," she said. "This fit, which really was not about ice cream, was the straw that broke the camel's back."

She took an innovative approach to address the issue.

“If I was going to rectify this, then grounding was not going to be effective,” she said. “I was going to have to give them a different experience if I really wanted to instill gratitude.” She decided that since the incident happened in a type of restaurant, they would no longer eat at restaurants until they met 30 people they had not met before and had given them food instead of getting food.

Her younger daughter responded to the idea by saying, "That's not fair. I wasn't the one who had the meltdown." Her older daughter said, "You're right. I think I'll learn a lot, and I shouldn't have done it."

They visited the local fire department with bags of nonperishable meals: spaghetti, pasta sauce, canned fruits and canned vegetables and boxes of brownies in blue gift bags. The firefighters were so appreciative. They sat with them for an hour and a half and told them about how they help the community.

They repeated the experiment with other people in their community.

Vermont, 41, said when they got their dog groomed, they told the groomer about their project and asked about her life story. The groomer told them she was 23 years old, and her 1-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. She was having trouble paying the bills and buying food. At that point, Vermont said to her kids: So, how important was that ice cream?

And they started getting it.

They also approached the woman who cuts their hair. “I went in and said: My daughter had a meltdown over ice cream because she wanted more. And so, I decided my children needed to meet people they didn't know and learn about their lives, so they can develop an appreciation for other people in their community as well as their own lives.” The hairdresser responded, "I always ask clients about them; no one asks about me." She was a single mom, divorced, raising three kids on her own. And that day was her daughter's birthday, and she was at work.

The entire project took almost five months. They did not buy any food at any restaurant during that time, except once on a daughter’s birthday.

The kids were introduced to some very grown-up topics: a teen mom who gave up her baby for adoption, a lesbian who was not accepted by her family, issues of poverty and illness. They heard from a Holocaust survivor, a Bosnian war survivor and a recovering drug addict. “It really helped them understand a lot of lessons I try to teach them to hear it from someone else who has lived through it,” Vermont said.

She also noticed changes in her kids’ behavior.

“Someone stole our younger daughter's scooter from our front lawn,” she said. Her older daughter called her grandparents and said, "For my birthday can you get a scooter for (my sister) as my present because she lost hers and is really upset?" Before, their thinking always was, “What am I getting for my birthday?” They seem much more compassionate now.

For Hanukkah, Vermont gave them a couple of CDs and DVDs, and her daughters were fine with that. They’ve also been doing a lot of shopping since the ice cream incident at Goodwill.

“I didn't think that would go over well, but they are totally fine with it,” she said. The experiment seems to have paid off.

“If I had grounded her, she would have forgotten about it in a month, but this had an impact on all of us, and we will never forget it,” Vermont said.

I recently asked my 13-year-old son what the best gift I’ve ever given him was. He answered right away: “Life.” OK, fair enough, I said. But, set that aside.

He thought for a second and then asked for clarification. “Do you mean a physical gift or a mental gift?” (By mental, I think he meant intangible.) I told him to share whatever came to mind. “As far as physical gift, probably the DS,” he said. That’s a handheld game console made by Nintendo that acted like a permanent extension of his hands for several years.

“As far as mentally, teaching me how to get things done,” he added. That’s an interesting choice. I’m pretty sure it’s part of the basic parenting deal -- loving them, providing for them and teaching them how to survive and thrive in this world. I wanted to tell him that’s not a gift; that’s my job. But I appreciated the sweetness of the answer, so I moved on to interrogate the next child.

She’s 16 and far less sentimental in her conversations with me. When I asked her, she answered pretty quickly.

“When you got us Hamilton’ tickets,” she said. A few years back, all we heard in our home were the songs from that Broadway musical. She was obsessed, which got her younger brother into the music, which got us curious, too. When tickets went on sale for a run in Chicago, I spent considerable time online and kept striking out. I called the box office and was able to get tickets for a show more than eight months later. The cost exceeded what I would normally spend on a gift, so I surprised her on Eid (our holiday at the end of Ramadan) with the disclaimer that this would be her Eid and birthday gift for the next year. She freaked out.

We ended up making a family weekend out of it. The months of looking forward to it added to the enjoyment of the experience. This is my child who loves memorable experiences -- concerts, adventures -- and those are my favorite gifts to give, as well. There’s the added bonus of reliving a great memory. To be honest, seeing “Hamilton” was a gift for all of us.

Lastly, I turned to my husband. Neither of us is a fan of receiving expensive gifts from each other. We consult each other on any major purchase, anyway. Once I wanted to surprise him with tickets to a concert we had both wanted to see. My excitement got the better of me, and I told him right after I got the tickets. Turns out, he had planned to buy the same tickets as a surprise for me later that same day.

I already knew the answer to my best gift question, because he’s told me several times that the Breville tea maker I got for one of his birthdays was the best gift ever. He had been eyeing it for a year but was reluctant to spend $250 on a convenience appliance. It makes a perfect cup of tea every morning. He has used it every single day since I gave it to him. It’s always great when someone else buys us something we really want but consider too indulgent to buy ourselves.

All this talk of gifts made me reflect on the best ones I’ve received. Like my son, I created two categories in my mind -- stuff and non-stuff. My favorite physical gifts tend to be the cards, letters, poems and keepsakes the kids make. That stuff is priceless.

The truly best gift, however, my loved ones give far more than once or twice a year.

It’s letting go of all the times I’m less than my best self. It’s overlooking my bad habits and worst mistakes. It’s the love that persists despite living with my flaws and shortcomings.

The best gift is forgiveness.

Winifred Imhof Cook blazed a path on a typewriter.

She grew up in a small town in central Pennsylvania and knew she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps as a journalist. When she graduated from Penn State in 1948, few women worked in the country’s newsrooms as journalists.

“My mom was a pathbreaker,” her daughter, Pam Cook, of the Bay Area, said. Winifred Cook became an editor and writer at the Trenton Times, a daily in New Jersey. Eventually, she joined the staff of the Home News in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she worked for 25 years as a features writer and one of the first consumer affairs editors in the country.

Nowadays, 70 percent of mothers with children under the age of 18 work in the paid labor force. In the 1950s, Cook was more of an anomaly.

She was the only mother who scheduled parent-teacher conferences in the evening because she worked during the day, her daughter recalled. She knew her male colleagues got paid more than their female counterparts, and the unfairness rankled her, Pam Cook said.

Winifred Cook built her career interviewing noteworthy individuals, like Lucille Ball, Barry Goldwater Jr., Malcolm Forbes and Vidal Sassoon. She investigated consumer issues. The paper nominated her work for a Pulitzer once. She won a string of awards. She made an impression in less obvious ways, as well. A former classmate told Pam Cook decades later that he decided to pursue a career in journalism after their elementary school class visited her mom in the newsroom.

Winifred Cook retired in the mid-‘80s, long before the digital revolution transformed newsrooms. Her stories don’t exist on the internet, but in boxes filled with folders of clips her daughter inherited after her mom passed away in 1995. That year, her former paper merged with the News Tribune of Woodbridge Township. It was later bought by Gannett.

Her daughter has spent years going through boxes of old clips and memorabilia, sending stories and photos to historical societies or libraries who may have an interest in preserving some of it. Earlier this year, Pam Cook came across a clipping in those files from a Life magazine article published in 1953. It was yellowed and delicate, like old paper gets when it ages. Life magazine had written an editorial that was a paean to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's investigative reporting and fearlessness of its editorial page. The piece marked the 75th anniversary of the paper with effusive praise.

Winifred Cook didn’t have any connection to St. Louis or its paper, but the piece must have inspired her when she read it because she had saved it for decades.

Her daughter decided it should go to a female journalist, so she Googled our paper’s website, stltoday.com. She came across the names of features writers, picked one and mailed the old clipping with a short note. Given the turnover in newsrooms these days, she wasn’t sure if the writer even still worked there.

In early August, I had returned from a week’s vacation to a stack of mail in my newsroom mailbox. A package from California caught my eye. Most of my snail mail arrives from somewhere in the Midwest.

I opened it and pulled out a creased and faded page. The words that inspired a trailblazing newswoman about my paper’s courageous editorial page arrived the same week I started writing editorials for that same paper.

It felt like Winifred Imhof Cook was shaking a fist at those attacking journalists today. Perhaps she was encouraging the rest of us to keep on keeping on.

I got that page framed.

It brings to mind the work journalists around the world aim to do. It honors the writers who upheld the values of the Pulitzer platform engraved in our lobby and printed at the top of our editorial section every day -- regardless of the consequences.

Even more, that worn page reminds me of the newswomen who made a space for more voices at the table.

Newspapers have suffered deep cuts in staff and rising attacks on journalists and the freedom of the press itself. The final paragraphs of the Life editorial show how a few things stay the same, and how much everything changes.

"The Post-Dispatch in its 75th successful year is living proof that journalism cannot survive but prosper by speaking its mind and serving as the conscience -- even when a conscience must be irritating -- of democracy."

The paper marked its 140th year of daily publication on Wednesday.

Thanks, Winifred Cook, for the reminder of what endures.