×

There are heroes all around us

I was thinking about our annual heroes special edition and who I might nominate. I came up with quite a few people who, over the years, have impressed me with their dedication to or love for our communities. I’m not going to list them because I don’t want to influence you, but I will tell you this much:

Some of the people that came to mind are or were public officials, some are or were police officers, some are business people, some are just people I’ve run into, gotten to know or even worked with.

It’s an eclectic group.

But as examples, we’ll take a trip into the past and I’ll tell you about some of the people who, were they living in the Souhegan Valley, would qualify, and that might spark your interest:

? Helen Chamberlain. My sixth-grade teacher. She was in her 60s then, so to a sixth-grader, incredibly old. But she helped to foster my love of reading. My parents read voraciously. But they were my parents, so it didn’t really count. Miss Chamberlain, an outsider, made it all right. She tried to instill that love of reading in every kid because she knew how important it was. Oh, and she loved cats.

? Peggy Rybnikar, my maternal grandmother, whom I trusted completely. I told her things I didn’t dare tell my parents. She was a little ditzy and never had any sage advice, but she always listened and that is so important to a kid. Even much later, when I was a chronological adult, I could talk to her and she still listened.

OK, the next one’s weird:

? Bob Knight. Yeah, that Bob Knight. The former Indiana basketball coach. Nope, never met him but I did talk to him on the phone once: He called me after seeing a copy of a column I’d written about him. He liked it. He invited me to Indiana. I never went. I admired Bob Knight because he had real beliefs and so many of us don’t. So many of us are so Libran that we bend over so far backwards to see the other side that we fall and get concussions. That is not to say that inflexibility is a good thing and I like to think that Knight could/would see another point of view, but that he’d always come from a core belief. I’m not sure this makes any sense, and I’m not sure that having a core belief makes one a hero, but I admired him for that.

What they all have in common, I think, is a sense of commitment. To some, that commitment comes with the job. It’s hard to be a police officer or a firefighter if you aren’t committed to what you do. You can’t do it half-heartedly, or why do it at all?

But to some, the commitment is well outside the job, whatever that job might be. They might work with kids or they might volunteer at an animal shelter. Whatever it is, they are committed to doing it.

The other criterion for me is a sense of decency. I can’t really define that well but it’s one of those things I know, or at least sense, when I see it, when I’m around that person: He or she just seems to be someone upon whom we can depend, who will be there in a time of need, and who will ask for nothing in return. Perhaps that’s a poor definition of “decency,” but there you have it.

To me, these are the people we should call heroes. As a nation, we have a tendency to glorify as heroes those who play sports or star in movies or make music.

How that word came to be used in those contexts is a mystery to me; it seems to be something that evolved over the years, possibly because it’s easier to think in those terms rather than critically. I don’t know, and for the most part, I choose to ignore it. If someone with a bat in his hand is your hero, well, good for you.

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago when we launched our second search for heroes for our special edition that will be published in July and I’m hoping that we are swamped with nominations.

You still have time; the deadline isn’t until June 18. There’s a nomination ballot somewhere in the paper; find it. Nominate.

But think about this as you do: In the end, it doesn’t actually matter if the person you nominate is chosen as one of the final heroes, although that certainly would be nice. What is more important is what you think about and feel when you’re writing your nominations.

Just writing them will remind you of why you think so highly of the people you name and that, I think, will make you appreciate them all the more.

Send your nominations to Susan Clark at sclark@cabinet.com or mail her at The Cabinet, 17 Executive Dr., Hudson, NH 03051 or visit www.cabinet.com and click on Valley Heroes.

Michael Cleveland can be contacted at 673-3100, Ext. 301, or at mcleveland@cabinet.com.

There are heroes all around us

I was thinking about our annual heroes special edition and who I might nominate. I came up with quite a few people who, over the years, have impressed me with their dedication to or love for our communities. I’m not going to list them because I don’t want to influence you, but I will tell you this much:

Some of the people that came to mind are or were public officials, some are or were police officers, some are business people, some are just people I’ve run into, gotten to know or even worked with.

It’s an eclectic group.

But as examples, we’ll take a trip into the past and I’ll tell you about some of the people who, were they living in the Souhegan Valley, would qualify, and that might spark your interest:

? Helen Chamberlain. My sixth-grade teacher. She was in her 60s then, so to a sixth-grader, incredibly old. But she helped to foster my love of reading. My parents read voraciously. But they were my parents, so it didn’t really count. Miss Chamberlain, an outsider, made it all right. She tried to instill that love of reading in every kid because she knew how important it was. Oh, and she loved cats.

? Peggy Rybnikar, my maternal grandmother, whom I trusted completely. I told her things I didn’t dare tell my parents. She was a little ditzy and never had any sage advice, but she always listened and that is so important to a kid. Even much later, when I was a chronological adult, I could talk to her and she still listened.

OK, the next one’s weird:

? Bob Knight. Yeah, that Bob Knight. The former Indiana basketball coach. Nope, never met him but I did talk to him on the phone once: He called me after seeing a copy of a column I’d written about him. He liked it. He invited me to Indiana. I never went. I admired Bob Knight because he had real beliefs and so many of us don’t. So many of us are so Libran that we bend over so far backwards to see the other side that we fall and get concussions. That is not to say that inflexibility is a good thing and I like to think that Knight could/would see another point of view, but that he’d always come from a core belief. I’m not sure this makes any sense, and I’m not sure that having a core belief makes one a hero, but I admired him for that.

What they all have in common, I think, is a sense of commitment. To some, that commitment comes with the job. It’s hard to be a police officer or a firefighter if you aren’t committed to what you do. You can’t do it half-heartedly, or why do it at all?

But to some, the commitment is well outside the job, whatever that job might be. They might work with kids or they might volunteer at an animal shelter. Whatever it is, they are committed to doing it.

The other criterion for me is a sense of decency. I can’t really define that well but it’s one of those things I know, or at least sense, when I see it, when I’m around that person: He or she just seems to be someone upon whom we can depend, who will be there in a time of need, and who will ask for nothing in return. Perhaps that’s a poor definition of “decency,” but there you have it.

To me, these are the people we should call heroes. As a nation, we have a tendency to glorify as heroes those who play sports or star in movies or make music.

How that word came to be used in those contexts is a mystery to me; it seems to be something that evolved over the years, possibly because it’s easier to think in those terms rather than critically. I don’t know, and for the most part, I choose to ignore it. If someone with a bat in his hand is your hero, well, good for you.

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago when we launched our second search for heroes for our special edition that will be published in July and I’m hoping that we are swamped with nominations.

You still have time; the deadline isn’t until June 18. There’s a nomination ballot somewhere in the paper; find it. Nominate.

But think about this as you do: In the end, it doesn’t actually matter if the person you nominate is chosen as one of the final heroes, although that certainly would be nice. What is more important is what you think about and feel when you’re writing your nominations.

Just writing them will remind you of why you think so highly of the people you name and that, I think, will make you appreciate them all the more.

Send your nominations to Susan Clark at sclark@cabinet.com or mail her at The Cabinet, 17 Executive Dr., Hudson, NH 03051 or visit www.cabinet.com and click on Valley Heroes.

Michael Cleveland can be contacted at 673-3100, Ext. 301, or at mcleveland@cabinet.com.