Community

There are times one can't help but sit back and wonder about the luck, the divine intervention, whatever the label, that brought you to this kind of paradise.

Those are the thoughts that permeate during graduation.

The best part of the ceremony, at least for one observer, isn't so much the stage walking and sheepskin grabbing, it is the recitation of the scholarships money that has been earned by the senior class.

For a county this size, a population this small - and diced a bit when one considers those with an active stake in the public school system - and in economic times such as these, to put nearly $2 million in college and vocational scholarship money into students' pockets is stunning.

Sure, some of that amount is comprised of athletic and academic scholarships earned from outside of the county boundaries.

There are at least eight county high school softball players alone who are going to the next level with scholarship money, both academic and athletic.

There are several young men and women who have earned academic scholarships to prestigious institutions of higher learning, proving, as the late Dr. David Langston used to say, that there is no real horizon in Gulf County other than that we see ourselves.

But even with those rolled into the total amount, to be able to hand out nearly $2 million in scholarship money for the transition these students are to make into adulthood - that is saying something about community.

Yes, not every student received or earned an award of dollars, but break that down and that is roughly $13,000 per student in the graduating Class of 2009.

The Gulf County Scholarship Fund, established years ago, is in large part responsible for this haul for these seniors and to state that it is a model for other districts, other counties, other states, is to assert the obvious, especially for any one who has covered education outside of Gulf County.

Talk about a springboard for the future - this community puts up a sturdy model every year, every graduation ceremony.

Community can also be found in tragedy, in the story in other pages in this newspaper about the outreach for the family for a young Port St. Joe High School student who died in a fire at his Oak Grove home just before the school year ended.

The family had no insurance. A mother had lost a son. There was not even money for burial expenses.

But the community has reached out, particularly the folks at Oak Grove Assembly Church of God, who have committed to rebuilding the family home. They can not mend the wounds of the heart, so they are trying to balm those of the hearth.

While it is a painful story of unimaginable heartache and tragedy for a family, it is, in the words of Nick Leist's mother found elsewhere in this edition, an uplifting story because it shows the better side of our nature.

There is a family in crisis. There is a family receiving assistance from those who are closest and even those who had never known their son, never encountered them on the street or supermarket, but are nonetheless compelled to act, to extend a hand.

In those most unfortunate times, there are shoulders on which to stand and in some very significant way that should give all those who call Gulf County home considerable comfort.

We know, first-hand in many cases, that when the chips are down, there are those in the community who walk the extra mile, exert the extra effort, offer the extra hand, to keep us in the game.

There is something special to be said for that, something that makes this place, with the problems and trials and tribulations of so many other spots on the map, unique, a throwback of sorts.

Then we have the ongoing situation regarding ARC & Gulf Transportation and the potential lien that may be placed on their building by a property association in what one person this week described as an attempt to extract "blood money."

Here are the very folks who go that extra mile, exert that extra effort, and they are suffering a penalty, of several thousand dollars they do not have as these are shoestring operations, for reasons that have nothing to do with community.

Heck, the developer of this commerce park of which the ARC Building is part can unilaterally change the very covenants that dictate the dues of some $7,000 that ARC& Gulf Transportation "owe" so the "debt" can surely be wiped clean.

But the entire scenario turns community upside down, because if there is a debt that is owed, it is a community's debt to the folks at ARC& Gulf Transportation.

One can't remind some folks enough - take a stand for community and wipe out the debt. Better yet, turn the money into a donation to ARC& Gulf Transportation. That's community fabric being weaved.