There have been a few people that I’ve been thinking about while waiting to strap Tango, the Wonder Hound, to the dogsled and head out for provisions.
I’ve been thinking about Fred Gusz, who was recently named the “Outstanding Citizen of the Year” by the Greater West Chester Chamber of Commerce. I’ve have been acquainted with Fred Gusz for quite some years, and there are a few things that I know about him that the chamber forgot to share with its membership before they voted him in as the year’s outstanding citizen. Because, however, I find the sort of historical revisionism that is currently taken for granted in the media (See” “Edwards, John – Former Aid Sells Tell-All Book”) I am going to keep those items to myself.
Unless, of course, some publisher fronts me six figures to do a tell-all book about the outstanding West Chester citizen of the year, then I’ll just start making stuff up as quickly as I can.
Frankly, though, I could not be more pleased with giving Fred Gusz a nod or two. In all the years that I have known him, he has seemed to me to be the epitome of what you want a citizen to be. He is friendly, he is honest, and he is charming, but more than that he sees people for who they are and what they do, instead of looking at a label that someone else has pinned on them. He has friends in both political parties, and toils away with them for the greater good of the community even though he probably wouldn’t agree with them on every issue that comes down the pike.
He is the sort of person who will accompany a young reporter to a Bob Dylan concert and then get praised by the Republican former mayor of West Chester, all without changing his personality. I almost never agree with what commerce chambers do, but this time I’m signing on.
I’ve been thinking about my former colleague Jill Nawrocki, who was a staff reporter at the Daily Local News for a couple of years in the early 2000s. When she was slouching at her desk in the newsroom, she appeared mostly interested in television shows about teenagers in high school, or television shows about Olympic athletes. But you should know that Jill Nawrocki just finished two years of duty in the Peace Corps, stationed in Namibia working with young children there to make their lives fuller, better, and healthier.
Jill is of the generation that many people complain about because of their lack of commitment and sense of entitlement, and I do not know if she is the exception to the rule or an odd combination of focus and frivolity. I do know, however, that actions speak louder than words, and in Jill Nawrocki’s case those actions are very loud indeed, because Jill Nawrocki always had a rather powerful way of expressing herself.
Lastly I have been thinking of Charles Faust, better known as Charles Victory Faust, who was born in 1880 in Kansas and died in 1915 in Washington. I don’t know anything about the first 30 years of his life, but I know that for the last three he was a member of the New York Giants baseball team, even though he was not an athlete and had no baseball skills to speak of. He was put on the squad by John McGraw, the Giants’ manager, for good luck. I had read about him in the wonderful memorial to the old days of baseball, “The Glory of Their Times,” but was always a little skeptical about his contributions to the team.
So on Saturday I pulled out the “Total Baseball” almanac and looked him up. Sure enough, he pitched two innings in two games over four seasons with the Giants, and they won the pennant every year he was there. He died in 1915, and the Giants ended up in last place.
What each of these people tell me, I guess, is that I have to be careful whom I judge, because nobody really knows anybody
Ready, Tango?
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