The teacher who just graduated and got a job teaching first grade at the school where she went to first grade, with her first-grade teacher just down the hall.
The farmer who turned his farm over for a conservation easement and opens his corn rows and turkey pens up to schools so city kids can see where their food comes from.
The young man who wanted to be on the city council since he was seven and earned the spot over more experienced competition and works 26 hours a week to help his city.
The woman who turned a pile of rubble at the end of a parking lot in her apartment complex into a garden with the help of kids in the complex (and then got evicted -- but that's another story).
But today I want to tell you about Gordon Christensen.
I first met Gordon when I sat next to him at a Veterans' Day event last November. First he handed me a poem typed on blue paper and cut with serated edges that said something like, "it isn't the journalist who gives you freedom of speech, it's the soldier..." I thought to myself, he doesn't know I'm a journalist.
But that wouldn't have mattered.
Then he gave me a clothespin with a tiny washer glued on it and told me it was a washer and dryer. Then he told me about the ice cream social he does every year to celebrate the creation of the ice cream cone and how it started in his yard but now is a city-wide event. And when he found out my daughter was born on the same day as his ice cream social, he gave me an envelope filled with poems and stories and a $2 bill and told me to give it to my daughter. Then he gave me a quarter with something of significance stuck on it, which sad to say I've both lost and forgotten. (I tried once to throw away the washer and dryer thinking I would never see this man again, but while it was still in the garbage can I got assigned to do a story on a young man that turned out to be his son and since I had to call Gordon up for a couple color questions, I thought I'd better be able to report that I still had it -- so I pulled it back out. It's safe in my drawer again.)
The next time I saw the older gentleman -- a proud veteran -- was at a Memorial Day event, when he told me he liked the story I'd done about his son, but wished I'd included his daughter-in-law's maiden name in it so her family could get some credit too. And he reminded me about the ice cream social.
So I was thrilled to be assigned the ice cream social just last month, where I saw him in action -- seated on a chair off to the side of the event that now included live music and a car show, as well as his traditional free ice cream. Kids got their cones and then wandered over to where he told them about how cones started.
Here's Gordon in action:
When I talked to Gordon between readings, he pulled a copy of the story I'd written about his son out of his shirt pocket. He told me how he liked to show it to people, but he'd have liked it better if I'd included his daughter-in-law's maiden name. It was cut with serated edges.
And then he gave me a dime with a pin glued on to it. "It's a dime-and pin," he said, making it sound like "diamond pin."
I still have it.
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