Paul Hammel: Newspaper stories confirm there's still good people out there
Every so often, you’re reminded that people are generally good.
And, you get some idea how important the media is in helping generate good news.
My latest refresher came via a story I wrote for the Nebraska Examiner, an online news site that used to consume most of my labors.
It involved a woman I met when writing for the Omaha World-Herald about the tiny village of Whiteclay, where four beer stores were selling more than 3 million cans of beer a year to residents of the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
The Pine Ridge is one of the poorest areas in the United States. Alcohol possession and sales are banned there, officially, but alcoholism is rampant. Whiteclay – the closest, legal outlet for alcohol – was the reservation's liquor store.
Reporters, like me, wrote stories until we were blue in the face about the drunken, street people who urinated and passed out along the highway running through Whiteclay.
It was a pathetic sight, something you’d think you wouldn’t see in our country or state. But little changed in Whiteclay until we wrote stories about Nora Boesem.
Boesem, a former nurse, served as a foster parent for dozens of Native American kids afflicted with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, a set of often profound physical and mental handicaps caused by drinking during pregnancy.
We’re talking about kids who couldn’t walk and couldn’t speak words, who had major deformities, shortened lifespans and had cognitive development of preschoolers.
“Nora’s a saint,” one person told me, for taking in high-need kids that few others would. She ended up adopting several.
Anyway, upon hearing that Boesem was in dire financial straits due to a divorce, a wreck with an uninsured motorists, a cutback in government aid, and mounting medical bills for her now-14 adoptees, I picked up my reporter notebook and wrote a story.
The reaction blew me away, and reduced Boesem to tears. Within six hours of the story’s posting, $12,000 had been donated to a GoFundMe account started by a friend of Boesem’s.
As I write this, eight days later after the story ran in other publications, donations are nearing $29,000.
There are still good people in this world.
That’s the same reaction some of our Nebraska ranchers had this spring when they saw a semi-load of hay bales driving to their ranches, blackened by historic wildfires.
“People were just tearful,” said Jason Christensen of Crusty’s Feed Store in Arthur, where some donations were received. “They were humble and overtaken with emotion.”
Christensen said his store alone saw 700 semi-loads of hay arrive from as far away as Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina. There were also 10 donated truckloads of protein tubs. It was maybe half or a third of what was donated overall to fire victims in the state, he estimated.
“It’s a ‘thanks is not enough’ kind of deal,” Christensen said.
You often hear the same reaction after countless local chili feed fundraisers for families stressed by the pricey bills of treating a family member’s cancer.
In the news business, we often don’t know what, if any, impact was generated by a story.
But it’s good to know that stories, like the ones about Nora Boesem and others about the state’s fire-ravaged ranches, can still have an impact.
It’s also another reminder of how important a local newspaper, news site or a TV or radio station can be in spreading the word about people in need, people who need some help.
Because there’s still good people out there.
Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. He is a retired senior reporter for the Nebraska Examiner and the former Capitol Bureau Chief for the Omaha World-Herald. A native of Ralston, Nebraska, he loves traveling and writing about the state.
