Who is your hero?

I’ve been asked this question more times than I can count, and I’ve always had a hard time narrowing my answer down to just one person. I have heroes in so many different aspects in my life: family members who I’ve always looked up to, mentors who have helped to shape my career, courageous journalists fighting for the truth and authors with talents I’ve aspired to for as long as I can remember.

During the last several months, my list of heroes has grown even longer.

This year, the staff at Leader Publications took a new approach different from recent years in planning what types of stories would fill the annual Horizons edition. Instead of compiling a list of stories that simply seemed interesting or noteworthy, we took our publication to the next level by narrowing the focus a bit. This year’s publication has a theme: Heroes and Heritage.

Our editorial team put a lot of thought into what qualities are considered heroic, and what pieces of our heritage deserve to be revisited. We sought out input from the rest of the staff and community leaders, talked with and met lots of interesting people and did our homework researching innumerable topics that we thought might be of interest to our readers. We even surveyed a group of kindergartners to get a unique perspective on the definition of a hero.

Although it provided a little bit more work on the front end than typical years, I think the entire reporting staff would agree that the hard work paid off, as each of us met some truly inspirational people and learned more about our communities than I ever thought possible.

These heartwarming, compelling stories range from narratives about people defeating the odds to beat all sorts of barriers, from stereotypes to life-altering diseases; to people who put their lives on the line every day to keep our communities safe. Stories about more obscure types of heroes detail such stories as the lives of a family dealing with military deployments of a loved one, students putting in the extra effort to instill pride in their communities and people who work hard to preserve the heritage of our communities.

The latter lends itself to the second component of our theme, telling the history of so many aspects of our communities — stories ranging from the struggles the Pokagon Band have faced for more than a milennium to one man’s journey to find and restore his first car.

Two features from last year’s publication have returned as well: readers will find Shining Stars from our communities’ school districts in the “Superheroes in disguise” section at the beginning of the publication and Unsung Heroes from all over the area at the back of Horizons.

After months of hard work compiling our biggest publication of the year, I’m very proud not only of the publication that will be inserted in all of your papers one week from today, but the people and organizations featured inside.

Our communities are stocked to the brim with heroes, and I can’t wait for you all to read their stories.

 

Ambrosia Neldon is the managing editor at Leader Publications. She can be reached at (269) 687-7713, or by email at ambrosia.neldon@leaderpub.com.