Editor's note: Today AJC freelancer Bill Hendrick writes a special column reflecting on a year of writing Hometown Hero.
By Bill Hendrick
For The AJC
Reporters are the eyes and ears of newspapers — we write about what we see, hear, smell and feel, with the aim of putting readers in our shoes, heads, and sometimes, hearts.
And increasingly we’re getting ideas from readers by email.
Last summer, Ted Busch, a friend from college I hadn’t heard from in 40 years, sent me an email about a fellow fraternity brother, Claude Horne, who, with his wife Nancy, is living through an inconceivable tragedy — the loss of two college-aged sons to cancer and heart disease in 2007-2008, only five months apart.
Ted, who lives in Smyrna, had seen my email address in the AJC and added me to his “blast” list for fraternity news.
So it was that I read the horrible news about the Hornes.
Horne was in Vietnam when I joined the fraternity. We became friends when he returned to school after recovering from wounds. Good friends, I felt. But time passes. We mean to keep in touch, but careers and distance get in the way. We lose track. Even forget.
When I saw the email about “Claude and Nancy Horne” it took a second to realize that this was the study-buddy I knew as “Rusty.” I didn’t even know he had married, didn’t know Nancy, didn’t know they’d had three sons — and now only one.
My instincts as a reporter with 43 years in the game told me that their every-parents-nightmare story needed to be told because they’d tried to turn their tragedy into a triumph of sorts, launching a non-profit charity, Jeffrey’s Voice (http://jeffreysvoice.org), with Emory University to fight leukemia.
Nancy says the story “touched the hearts” of readers who responded with more than $2,000 in donations.
I have two grown sons, a daughter-in-law, and now a granddaughter, and could relate in a horrified way to the Hornes’ anguish.
Had it not been for Ted, I never would have known.
My stories, headlined “Hometown Heroes,” focus on remarkable people. And they have driven home the fact that there are many unsung heroes, and also that in the digital age, news travels far and fast.
After writing about Maj. Jed Morton, who fought in both Iraq wars but also found time to fly for Delta full-time and practice law in Atlanta, I got emails from his friends, as well as other readers. CheckPoints, the alumni magazine of the U.S. Air Force Academy, asked to publish the article. He heard from many Academy classmates.
He says the story, also the result of an email tip, highlighted “normal citizens willing to leave their homes, families and jobs to answer our nation's call to duty.”
Another story told how the Rev. Robert Certain, a POW in Vietnam and now an Episcopal priest in east Cobb, helps veterans via CareForTheTroops (http://www.careforthetroops.org); another, on Korean War veterans who give talks about their “forgotten” conflict to school kids, has put them in “great” demand as speakers, says Bob McCubbins, 81, president of the Atlanta chapter of the Korean War Veterans Association.
Based on my emails, readers seem hungry for “uplifting” news.
“We could all use more encouragement, I think,” a Roswell woman wrote.
I think she’s right.
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