Sebastian Miller is an incoming fifth grader in the Union-Endicott school district in Owego, New York. He wanted to play an instrument, and a senior engineering class in his own district built him a bow he could hold. WBNG 12 News reported it on August 4, 2026.
Sebastian was born with a birth injury that led to Erb’s palsy, a condition that affects the nerves in his arm and limits his movement. Holding and controlling a viola bow the traditional way was not possible for him.
Heather Worden, the district orchestra teacher, tried to solve it herself first. She made a homemade device she called “the contraption,” and it was not enough. She searched online for adaptive technology and found nothing that fit Sebastian’s needs. So she called the district’s technology department, and a senior engineering class took the project on.
Sebastian came into the engineering classroom, molded his hand, and talked with the students about what he needed. “We had Sebastian come in and we had him mold his hand,” said Jack Kiernan, a Union-Endicott alumnus who worked on the project. “And then we got to talk with him a little bit and see what he was really looking for, what his concerns were, and what he really needed out of an adaptive bow.”
The team went through rounds of prototypes. Teagan McGuinness, another Union-Endicott alumna on the project, said they all started off with their own independent concepts and brought them together at the end. Two of the decisions in the finished brace were Sebastian’s. He wanted it slightly curved and he wanted it elevated, and the students added an extender. The brace attaches to the bow and lets him hold the bow without holding it directly, because he cannot pivot his wrist easily.
The finished brace let Sebastian play using both arms alongside the rest of the orchestra at a school concert, and the students who built it were in the audience.
Sebastian did not know they were coming until a couple of days before.
Kiernan said seeing the device in use made the months of work tangible. “It’s especially cool to see him using something that I actually produced and put so much time into and actually working for him,” he said. McGuinness said she was glad the team was able to make it to the concert. Worden said the group came out of the project a team.
Sebastian described the whole experience as “a heck of a ride.” Of the concert itself, he said this.
I was shy and hesitant, but I was very proud and trying to do my hardest on stage.
She asked the next room over
Worden could not build the thing herself, and when she went looking for it, it did not exist. What she did next is the part worth noticing. She said out loud, to people down the hall, that a fifth grader needed a piece of hardware nobody sells. Down the hall, a class of seniors built him a bow he could hold.
That is the shape of a lot of help. Somebody has a need specific enough to sound impossible, and somebody else has exactly what it takes, and the two of them can be in the same school district and still never find each other. The gap is rarely the willingness. It is usually the introduction. The moment this whole thing started from was a mother on a West Point parents’ forum who had saved enough to travel to the ceremony but had nothing to wear, and another mother who had a red dress to lend her.
Sebastian’s brace had nothing to do with MeetaNeed, and the people in this story have never heard of it. The story is here because of what the asking did.
Where this story comes from
Originally reported by Andrew Fried for WBNG 12 News in Binghamton, New York, published August 4, 2026. Retold here with the details as that report gives them.
