The stars shine brighter when the sky is darkest. In the same way, selfless acts and lives of service stand out in brilliant relief against the narcissism and selfishness that seem to dominate our times. Three exemplars of this notion of service above self have been featured in our pages in recent days. Their stories — by turns sad or tragic because of the lives lost too soon, or inspiring for the commitment to aid those truly desperate for help — may serve as a guiding light for those who despair of the direction of the world.
Brian Walsh, a former Hanover resident, died on July 3, at age 74, while on his usual morning bike ride near his home in New Castle, N.H., where he had retired with his wife, Linda Patchett. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1965 and earning advanced degrees from the Thayer School of Engineering and Columbia University, Walsh helped start three technology companies, including Spectra Inc., now FujiFilm Dimatix, the inkjet manufacturer that is one of Lebanon’s leading employers.
His service to his town began in 1977, when he joined the Hanover Planning Board, and included a 15-year stint on the Selectboard (most of them as chairman) beginning in 1996. He eventually served on no fewer than 16 town boards and committees and played major roles in most of the town’s biggest projects of the last generation, including renovating and expanding Hanover High School, planning and building Richmond Middle School, and constructing the multi-level, 289-space parking garage on Lebanon Street. Most significantly, he played an indispensable role in the 1991 creation of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Those who knew and worked with Walsh praised his ethics, his willingness to listen and his ability to build consensus among parties with conflicting priorities. “He dedicated his life to the region and the Upper Valley,” longtime friend Steve Ensign, the former chief executive of Lake Sunapee Bank, told staff writer John Lippman. “He knew how to reach out and connect with people, how to compromise and how to humbly lead.”
Laura Cody McNaughton, of Perkinsville, was killed June 28 in a car crash on Interstate 91 in Hartland. The valedictorian of the Springfield (Vt.) High School Class of 2000, McNaughton held a bachelor’s degree from Bates College and a master’s degree in public health from Boston University. The mother of two young boys, she was working as the White River Junction district director of the Vermont Department of Health, and also was a member of the Public Health Council of the Upper Valley, the Weathersfield School Board and the related Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union Board.
Just 36 years old when she died, McNaughton was considered a rising star in the next generation of public health and community service leaders. But that didn’t mean she was above rolling up her sleeves and helping with whatever needed doing. Jill Lord, director of community health at Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center, recalled needing someone to take notes during a youth summit on substance misuse. McNaughton stepped in immediately, no questions asked. “She just had a sense of grace about her,” Lord told staff writer Nora Doyle-Burr.
That grace was evident in the sometimes-contentious negotiations over sharing regional grant money, and in the occasional clash of priorities during monthly meetings of the Randolph Executive Community Council. Somehow, said Melanie Sheehan, regional prevention program manager at Mt. Ascutney, McNaughton always “found a way to shepherd us through a process where folks felt heard.”
Peter Holman Jr., a Hanover resident, is an attorney with the Boston-based law firm Ropes & Gray. Three days before Independence Day, he and three colleagues from the firm arrived at the Port Isabel Service Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border. Working with the nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project, they spent two full days meeting with adults who had fled their violence-wracked Central American home countries and sought asylum in the United States — only to have their children spirited away by immigration agents. The stories they told of being separated from their children — some as young as 5 — were “gut wrenching,” Holman told Doyle-Burr.
This was not Holman’s first experience in the immigration arena. He has offered his professional services for free — “pro bono” is the legal term — in other immigration cases, including with a team helping some 70 Indonesian families who have been living in New Hampshire’s Seacoast region.
“To have this opportunity to actually be there on the front line participating in actually helping these people meant a lot to me personally,” he said. “This was the most patriotic thing I could do.”
Ethics. Grace. Service above self. The stars shine brighter when the sky is darkest.