SUMMER 2002George Crispin
Woodbury MM
wenty-two years ago I moved to South Harrison Township in Southern New Jersey. For most of my life I had lived in, first a small city, then the suburbs. Most of my life I longed for, dreamed of, and planned to move to the country. What we noticed first was the silence, allowing for the voice of nature to be heard. The following year we built a barn, and thus ventured into farming. It was not my full-time occupation, but teaching allowed for summers off, and it provided a wonderful balance to our lives. It was not a coincidence that where I settled was within four miles of the farm where my father was born. I was returning to my roots. I was returning to that portion of land where five generations had preceded me; it was the land of my fathers. I was coming home.
Not being able to grow my own hay, I bought from the local farmers. Each morning I went to the post office for the mail; there neighboring farmers and citizens from Harrisonville gathered. Discussions ranged over the weather, crops, and who had a baby. Harrisonville is a small village, small by any standard. It is one street, mainly; perhaps twenty homes, a post office, Grange Hall, fire department, furniture store, and the only place in the township that has sidewalks. As I did business I soon found that it was one of the few places left where a hand shake is as good as a contract, a promise was to be fulfilled, and trust was the main rudder to their strong ethical system. No farmer has ever counted the bales of hay I bought and loaded in my pickup, and I have never taken more than I paid. That is the way the system works.
bout a year after I moved in and started doing business in the community, I was invited to join Ruritan. Basically, I am not a joiner. But this seemed a good idea. I could get to know more about the locale and about farming. Thus, I joined, attended the meetings, and helped with the chicken barbecue, pancake breakfasts, pork sales, all money-raisers to help the township. Each December the Ruritans put up Christmas lights through town. Each spring the Ruritans help with the Science Fair at the elementary school. When there were tragedies, the Ruritans were there to help. A family’s home was burned out; the Ruritans collected and donated furniture so they could rebuild. At Thanksgiving a family had little food because the father was laid off; the Ruritans appeared with a turkey and trimmings. A boy had kidney failure; a check was provided by Ruritans to defray the cost of dialysis. A teen-age girl had a chance to compete in a national fair; Ruritans made sure that she could at tend. A young man wanted to go to college, but his family could not afford tuition; Ruritans contributed. The list goes on until it fades into memory.
Recently two currents in our national life have become major concerns for me. The first is the continual drum beat of negativity in our media. Tragedies make news, the more horrific the better. I have stopped watching the 11 pm news. Every night a murder is reported, a shoot ing, a rape, a robbery. This is what sells, I suppose, but what about the good things, the daily acts of kindness, perennial heroism? The long-range effect can only be a sinking cynicism, especially visible in our youth, and a lost opportunity to raise our hopes.
What is obscured by this emphasis is the good done in the world, drop by drop, bit by bit, person to person. What is also obscured is the value of smallness. The Ruritan club to which I belong has about twenty members; I know each member by first name. We have a small community; I know most by recognition. Wondering what the cumulative effect of our doing good might be, I did some checking. I was surprised by what I found. Each year we organized four major money raisers. This has produced a decade average of $4,164 per year. Over the past decade this, and other activities, have resulted in $47,058, which is plowed back into the community in service areas. This does not count the myriad of personal contributions, out- of-pocket money that is never added into the expense column. Nor do these figures include the incalculable effects of the many person-to-person encounters that en courage the community. The cumulative effect is formi dable. When one considers that Ruritan organizations all over the United States are making similar contributions to their communities, the results for good are mountainous.
Like snowflakes, tiny and individual, silently coming unheralded in the night, in the aggregate they cover the landscape.
[This article, which first appeared in the Fall 2001 Ruritan, is copyright © 2001 by Ruritan International and used with permission—Ed.]
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