All Kinds of Heroes

Bob Fletcher, a Sacramento farmer, died May 23, 2013 at age 101. My local paper ran an article about him because of what he did between 1942 and 1945.

 “A state agricultural inspector, Fletcher acted instinctively to help Japanese-American farmers. He quit his job and went to work saving farms belonging to the Nitta, Okamoto and Tsukamoto families in the Florin community of Sacramento.

 “In the face of deep-anti-Japanese sentiment … Fletcher worked 90 acres of grapes. He paid the mortgages and taxes and took half the profits. He turned over the rest – along with the farms – to the three families when they returned (from internment camps) in 1945.

 “I did know a few of them pretty well and never agreed with the evacuation,” he told the local paper. “They were the same as anybody else. It was obvious they had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.”

There are all kinds of heroes.

 For example, on an extremely windy day, I stopped to run a quick errand before mailing a graduation card (with money enclosed). Somehow the wind whipped the (addressed and stamped) card out of my car and I thought it was lost forever. I sent an email to the recipient’s mom and grandmother, reporting the disaster, saying that I would replace it unless, by some miracle, the original showed up.

It showed up. There was a tire mark across the envelope but it was mailed, unscathed, with the enclosed money to the intended recipient.

There are all kinds of heroes.

Who knows what act – however big or however small – might alter the course of a person’s life, or at least significantly brighten their day.

Stay alert.