Monthly Archives: April 2015
Unsung Heroes – Spring 2015
Unsung Heroes – Spring 2015
The Spring 2015 edition of Pennsylvania Bridges is now available online.
Cover photo courtesy of wildlife photographer, Glenn Mucy.
Unsung Heroes: Editor’s Note, Spring 2015
Photo by Amy Capiross, Amy Cap Photography
Three weeks before his murder in December 1980, John Lennon’s last album, Double Fantasy, was released. A collaborative effort with Yoko Ono, one of the album’s songs contains a phrase I often quote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” I like this quotation so much you’ll notice I chose to use it as this edition’s Notable & Quotable.
This sage sentiment is one of the lyrics of “Beautiful Boy” – an ode Lennon penned for his son, Sean. Still, however well-intentioned Lennon may have been in wanting to convey this powerful adage to his young progeny, this idea that life often takes us by surprise when we least expect it, the thought didn’t originate in his psyche.
When researching this phrase so I could accurately quote it – pun intended – in Notable & Quotable, I discovered the author of this particular piece of advice was actually author and cartoonist Allen Saunders, who wrote “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans” in an article published in Reader’s Digest in 1957. In 1957, John Lennon was a kid of 17, and it would be three years before the “Fab Four” would form The Beatles.
It’s often said “good writers borrow and great writers steal” and while this message rings true, it doesn’t make Lennon any less of a thief for trying to pass “Life is what happens…” off as his own words. Nor does it make me any less complicit for perpetuating the myth the aforementioned advice was his alone, which begs the question why I chose to do so. I wanted to put a photo of Allen Saunders above this quote I’ve long cherished. The problem is I couldn’t find a usable one and, for that matter, I was unable to unearth much information about Saunders at all.
Here’s what I did learn, in a nutshell. Allen Saunders, who was born in the last year of the 19th century and departed this life in 1986, was best known for writing and illustrating the popular comic strips Mary Worth and Steve Roper. These comics were long running visual serials, a collection of which might nowadays be called a graphic novel. Saunders was industrious and driven and it was his fervent belief that everyone had a story worth telling, an ideal he espoused in his autobiography when he stated “as long as there are people, there are plots.” But, on the whole, history has overlooked this unsung hero.
Unsung heroes, they’re all around us and yet they go unnoticed. Case in point is Viola Liuzzo, slain civil rights advocate, subject of this edition’s lead story, and one time resident of California, Pa., where this publication’s office is located. Another example would be Westmoreland County attorney John Noble, who devotes time and resources to showcasing the talents of youth in our region. His story is on pages 5 & 6.
This edition is so packed full of heroes, unsung and otherwise, we added four new pages to contain them all. Won’t you celebrate them with us and give them the long awaited recognition and acclaim they deserve?
