Wise Up (10/05/09)

Good Deeds

"¢ The Family Visitation Center at Athens County Children Services needs new toys and arts and crafts. Please send monetary donations to Family Visitation Center, Athens County Children Services, PO Box 1046, Athens, OH 45701.

"¢ These days, when someone is asked to name a hero, that hero may very well be a celebrity or other famous person, who of course are people and as capable of doing good - or evil - as the rest of us. All too often, we don't think of a hero as being a person who lives down the street. For example, when Guardian journalist Shazia Mirza was asked to name some heroes, she mentioned a number of famous people. Only after the interview was over did she think about Maureen, who lived down the street when Shazia was a child. Shazia writes, "She had burgundy hair and walked down the street in an apron with Rolf Harris's face on it and rollers in her hair. She was always happy and always busy. She took 20 children into her care and brought them up as her own, and to earn extra money she washed other people's clothes by hand and did their gardening." Such a person does great good in her life without ever achieving fame or being mentioned on lists of top-10 heroes. Shazia writes, "A select list of stereotypical heroes is presented to us by other people and the media. Maureen wasn't on that list, so I didn't say her name. But I should have."

"¢ In September of 2008, the wife of musician Mark Mulcahey died, leaving behind 3-year-old twin daughters and a husband who could use some money to raise his family and to keep on making music rather than to have to seek a day job. Coming to the rescue were many respected fellow musicians, who created an album of covers of Mr. Mulcahey's songs. The album is titled "Ciao My Shining Star," and its purpose is, in the words of journalist Nige Tassell, who interviewed Mr. Mulcahy, "to achieve a little financial breathing space for Mulcahy so he can resume his musical activities, the first of which will be the new record 'that's been sitting there blinking at me for nine months with nothing done on it.'" Of course, Mr. Mulcahy was touched that such musicians as Thom Yorke, Michael Stipe, and Frank Black would record the album of covers to give him some financial support. Mr. Mulcahy says, "It's not that my house burned down and I'm in some drastic position. But I'm really, really touched, you know. It's something that I wouldn't want anybody to have to understand, but it's incredible to try to understand it."

"¢ In September of 2009, Garrison Keillor of Lake Woebegon fame suffered a minor stroke and ended up in a hospital for a while, where he discovered - or realized anew - that "[n]urses are smart and brisk and utterly capable." In addition to being capable at the technical part of their job, they are capable of humor. For example, when a nurse was putting an ID band on Mr. Keillor's wrist, she asked, "Care for some jewelry?" In addition, Mr. Keillor writes that "women have the caring gene that most men don't. Men push you down the hall in a gurney as if you're a cadaver, but whenever I was in contact with a woman, I felt that she knew me as a brother." Nurses take care when doing such things as drawing blood, as Mr. Keillor points out: "The women who draw blood samples at [the] Mayo [Clinic] do it gently with a whole litany of small talk to ease the little blip of puncture, and 'Here it comes' and the needle goes in, and 'Sorry about that,' and I feel some human tenderness there, as if she thought, 'I could be the last woman to hold that dude's hand.' A brief sweet moment of common humanity."

"¢ During the making of "To Catch a Thief," starring Cary Grant and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, script supervisor May Wale Brown felt privileged to be included in their conversations. At one point, Mr. Hitchcock asked Mr. Grant, "How do you keep so fit?" Mr. Grant said that he followed the advice of nutrition expert Adelle Davis, who had written a book titled "Let's Eat Right." Ms. Brown, another Adelle Davis follower, commented that she had lent eight copies of that book to friends who had never returned them. Mr. Grant showed up at the set the following day with two copies of Ms. Davis' book: one for Mr. Hitchcock and one for Ms. Brown. In Ms. Brown's copy, he had written, "Please return this copy to May promptly or feel guilty forever after. [Signed] Cary Grant."

"¢ Some Holocaust heroes did not speak about their heroism. One such hero was Nicholas Winton, an Englishman who helped out at a refugee camp in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He saw that the children in the camp needed help, and he convinced many families in England to take these children into their homes. Over 600 children were taken to England in a kindertransport and adopted. Most of their biological parents ended up being killed by the Nazis. Once England declared war on Germany, the kindertransport had to stop. Years after the war, his wife, Greta, ran across an old briefcase belonging to her husband. It was filled with letters from parents who were grateful that he had found safety for their children. Only then did she learn that her husband was a hero.

"¢ In a letter to the editor of the Naples News in Naples, Fla., Nancy Pritchard wrote, "As we are all aware, good deeds go unreported and bad deeds fill the news." However, she quickly did something to rectify the situation by writing about a good deed that had been done for her. She had bought groceries at the Naples Walk Publix Supermarket, and had driven away leaving her purse in the shopping cart. After 20 minutes had passed, she realized what she had done and so she returned to the supermarket. Fortunately, Joanna Schrenko of John R. Wood Realtors had found the purse and had turned it in to an employee of Naples Walk Publix. Ms. Pritchard closed her letter by writing, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart."