Reminded to care: Volunteers set example for us all

Unless you are one of the many people they help, you probably wouldn’t recognize their faces or their names.

That is the hallmark of most volunteers. They do their work in silence and without any call for fanfare. They don’t accomplish what they do for attention. There is work to be done, and they see it as their duty to get the mission accomplished.

Technical Sgt. Greg Wilson, Pat Faircloth, Ann Adams, Durwood Bostic and Suzanne Tyner probably would have preferred to use the time it took to honor them to speak in support of the causes they work so hard to support. And Order of the Long Leaf Pine honoree Emily Weil would probably give you a thousand names of people who deserved the honor more than she did. That is what people who are selfless and committed to helping others do. They do not see themselves as special. They are all about the causes they support, and the work that they do.

The men and women honored this week would tell you that they have received as many blessings as they have given, and that the people they have met have touched their lives. And they are probably right. They probably are better people because they took the time to think of someone else.

But even though they would argue that there are others more worthy, that should not stop us from recognizing just how much these people have given not only to the causes they support, but to their community.

Without their efforts, there would be children stuck in bad homes, fires unattended, dogs and cats suffering and abandoned and hundreds of local residents going through disasters alone. And this is just a portion of what these men and women have accomplished.

And their community should be very grateful and humbled by their accomplishments.

Caring about others is a mantle we should all strive to carry. Even a bit of volunteer time can change lives and influence the future of a community.

In our busy lives, often we forget to take the time to give something back to the community that has supported us and our families. We are so busy thinking about after-school activities, work pressures and the work that hasn’t been done at home that we miss what is really important.

People like the 2005 Volunteers of the Year and the Order of the Long Leaf Pine honoree remind us.

Published in Editorials on August 24, 2005 10:38 AM