by Laura Beers
Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, USA
In 1983 I was a high school student in Queens, New York. I was also a model and traveled to Manhattan occasionally. I almost always traveled alone.
HeroicStories
The stories of HeroicStories.
The Unstoppable Hero
by Brent Clevenger
Navan, County Meath, Ireland
My father is a truck driver, and has been for over 30 years. He works12+ hour days, and weekends, hauling scrap metals, toxic industrial residues and other dangerous materials. Someone has to move these things, I am glad it’s someone as reliable as my Dad.
A Stitch in Time
by Laura R.
California, USA
Knowing I edited a newsletter, in 2017 a friend asked for help with a project her son is doing for his Eagle Scout badge. She wanted to put a notice in the paper asking for donations of toys, games, and books on behalf of her son, John Scott. His plan was to give them to the children in our local domestic violence and abuse shelter. He also asked for fabric scraps so he could make child-sized quilts for these children; he wanted them to have something warm and soft.
For Whom Belle Toils
by Luella
City and State Withheld, USA
It’s a very small town, populated by a lot of elderly widows — the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else and there are very few secrets. When a comparatively young woman and her husband moved to town, they were of considerable interest to everyone because they were so very different from the life-long citizens.
Where There’s Smoke…
By “Bill”
Austin, Texas, USA
I opened the door to the back stairs from the kitchen of the house where I lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, back around 1975. I smelled smoke. This wasn’t your ordinary somebody’s-cooking-burgers-on-the-grill kind of smoke.
Following a Hunch
by The Caroler
California, USA
In 1990, as was our family tradition, my husband and I invited children from the local high school aCappella choir, including our son, to sing Christmas Carols to people we felt could use some special Christmas cheer. My husband dressed up as Santa Claus and drove a rented flat bed truck.
The Envelope
by Lisa Swindler
South Carolina, USA
In 1998, a week before Thanksgiving, I took our 10-month-old baby daughter to the doctor for a check-up. The nurse commented how well she looked. Fifteen minutes later we were headed to the hospital emergency room. Ruth’s oxygen level was below 90 and she was having difficulty breathing. It was her fourth hospitalization that year.
The School Bus Driver
By Patty Mooney
California, USA
It’s been many years since I have had to stand on the end of Pusheck Road in Bellwood, a suburb of Chicago, waiting for the school bus, and yet I remember one special day as though it were yesterday.
Bucking the Crowd
by Jeff Simms
Barnegat, New Jersey, USA
It was a nippy Fall day — our favorite kind of weather. It was Saturday and we were going to have a great time. My divorced mother, two younger brothers and I were on our way to the park at the other end of the small Jersey town we lived in. We had our football and makeshift goal posts in the back of the station wagon and our teams already chosen: us against our mother. (Don’t worry, it was only touch football.)
If That’s All You Need
By L. Harding
California, USA
It was 1972. “The Summer of Love” was gone, hippies were a rare sight, but there were still large pockets of narrow minds, filled with distrust, in rural America. More than once we met with proof of that in our travels across “the heartland of America.” Our only home was our tent, our only “real furniture” the baby’s crib, all piled atop the TravelAll. My husband and I were down on our luck, moving from one temporary job to another.