RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

Bright spots in '08

It's been a rough year for many - layoffs, money woes, a bruising election season, even a wet blanket of a summer. But as always there are rays of light if you look for them, which we consider part of our job.

Throughout the year, we've written about countless examples of Vermonters helping one another in large and small ways, standing up to challenges and keeping in their hearts the things that really matter.

Here are some of the stories that made us smile, and we'd like your help in picking a favorite. Click on the "Pick your favorite" link at right to cast your vote.

If you'd like to refresh your memory (or missed a story when it appeared in the paper), you can find links to all the original text there too.

We'll print the results at the end of the year in this section.


"Okemo survivor thanks rescuers" - Feb. 6, by Josh O'Gorman

When Allen Stern returned to the place where he nearly died, he was all smiles. Stern went back to Okemo Mountain Resort in Ludlow to meet with the ski patrol members who were responsible for him being alive that day.

"Thank you for saving my life," Stern told them. "I don't know how many heart attacks you deal with, but you did a good job with this one."

The Cresskill, N.J., resident was skiing at Okemo when he had a heart attack. He felt limp while riding the lift and went to the Summit Lodge, where his heart stopped and he collapsed.

Ski patrollers Steve DePalma and Jared Whalen responded in moments and revived him with an automatic external defibrillator.

Patrol Director Jim Livingston said he was surprised that Stern began speaking immediately after being revived. "I've seen many codes and I've seen some survive, but I've never seen someone wake up and talk to me."



"Problem solved: Meet the 'Calvinator'" - March 8, by Mel Huff

When students in a problem-solving class at U-32 High School in East Montpelier tackled the hypothetical challenge of keeping themselves warm in the woods, a real-life challenge presented itself: Classmate J.T. Guilfoyle, who has difficulty walking because of physical disabilities, was finding it hard to get through the snow to the nearby woods where the class meets.

So Calvin Grandbois of Berlin, then 14, and Taylor Lawson, then 15 and from Middlesex, decided to build Guilfoyle a hybrid ski-bike - they call it a sled - to help him get around in the woods. "The J.T. Cruiser" made its first run a few weeks later. Then, in an effort to fix some of the bugs, Grandbois took apart the bike he got for Christmas and made Version 2, the "Calvinator."

"There wasn't any rulebook" for building it, observed their teacher, Eric Keck.

Other students drifted over as the builders made a few test runs down a hill next to the school.

"They're not even part of the class, but they came out to support J.T.'s inaugural voyage," said Keck.



"A joyful noise" - March 23, by Kevin O'Connor

Vanessa Doggett, 33, first picked up the violin as a child and soon earned top spots at multi-school music competitions. Then came the car crash one cold, dark night 13 years ago.

The Burlington native was in the passenger seat when the car and the tree it hit split in two. The 19-year-old's brain was severed in three places. She lay in a coma for weeks. When she woke, Doggett had lost her ability to walk and talk. Left with limited arm movement and needing a wheelchair, the young woman faced life in a nursing home.

Then she moved to a Wallingford apartment house run by Lenny Burke's Farm, a center for people with traumatic brain injuries. Gary Miller-Wade, a case manager and moonlighting musician, saw her lift her left arm up and down, then swing her right one back and forth. That's all you need, they both knew, to play the violin - again.

Doggett, having spent the past year taking music lessons with Miller-Wade, recently sounded another high note - U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., presented her with the Vermont Traumatic Brain Injury Program's award for Survivor of the Year.



"Taking life in stride" - May 1, by Anna Grearson

Susie Longchamp's parents made one of the most important decisions in their daughter's life when she was 10 months old. Longchamp was born without a fibula - the smaller of the two lower leg bones - and had her left leg amputated just below the knee. Just over 17 years later, Longchamp wrapped up a four-year, multi-sport career at Spaulding High School in Barre, and she couldn't agree more with her parents' choice.

"It was either not walking and being in a wheelchair or using crutches for my whole life, or amputating and being able to use prosthetics and walking and basically having a pretty normal life," she said after competing in the 1,500-meter run.

"I'm not really fast, but I really like the experience" of running track, she said.

Longchamp planned to major in psychology at St. Michael's College in Colchester. "I'm thinking about being some type of physician, and I feel that will give me sufficient prep for med school."

She concluded: "I have options."



"He's always there" - June 15, by Kevin O'Connor

Six months after his "Dad, teacher and mentor" died of cancer, 16-year-old home-schooler Willie Finkel shared his memories of Robert Finkel this past Father's Day.

"He taught me addition and subtraction," the Wardsboro boy recalled. "Before I could read, he had me doing fractions, percentages and basic geometry."

His father, winning a full scholarship to Columbia University at age 16, had graduated with a rare triple-major degree in English, philosophy and math.

"He loved math because it's so stable," his son says. "If you follow basic principles, you can solve almost any problem. I think he wished the rest of life would be like that."

Instead, Bob - a paramedic, cardiac rehabilitation specialist, health educator and researcher - was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2007 and died last December at age 63.

But he taught his son well. Willie, facing this past year without a lesson plan, interviewed family members and friends so he could write a biography of his dad. He also applied and won acceptance to Marlboro College, where he started this fall (like his father, at age 16).



"Cabot school's music effort hits a sweet note" - June 21, by Mel Huff

When a $350,000 bond issue to build a performing arts center for Cabot School's thriving music program failed two years ago, the school board and community supporters scaled the cost back to $150,000, asked the town to fund half and pledged to match the town's share through $75,000 in fundraising. The $200,000 gap? Community members filled it with offers of goods and services.

Local contractors also donated a portion of their time to work with students in a special construction class by the school's industrial arts teacher.

The school reached its $75,000 goal this summer, including $14,000 raised from a semi-formal, $100-per-person gala in late July.

The arts center's footings and frost walls were poured in late September, and recently the space was enclosed. "We had a field trip and nobody wanted to go on it because it was the first day the framing was going up. Nobody wanted to miss it," said guidance counselor Sue Polen.



"Pulling for Rutland" - Sept. 15, by Stephanie M. Peters

Just call her the phantom gardener. Rutland City resident Elaine Mullan has been quietly weeding and tidying up overgrown landscaping downtown.

She does this, unprompted, on nearly every day off she gets from her full-time job as a nurse at the hospital, and not because she's looking for recognition.

Mullan is just sick of seeing downtown so unsightly, and she knows the parks and recreation department, local businesses and the city's garden club might not be able to keep up with the tedious work by themselves.

"It's really refreshing and heartfelt (for) us to see any individual try to make things better. It certainly helps us feel better about what we do. Most of the time we're dealing with vandalism from people who are more interested in doing damage," said Bob Peterson, director of maintenance for the parks and recreation department.



"We are watching" - Nov. 6, by Kevin O'Connor

How far would a Barack Obama supporter go to celebrate his historic win? For Vermonter Andrew Cunningham, nearly 7,500 miles to the president-elect's ancestral homeland of Kenya.

When Cunningham flew to Africa earlier this year to help build the first girls boarding school in Muhuru Bay, the 22-year-old Rutland native knew the rural village had neither electricity nor running water - only a few solar generators.

But those were enough for Cunningham to power a television and laptop computer early Wednesday morning, Nov. 5 - the country is nine hours ahead of Vermont - so villagers could follow U.S. election returns on the Internet.

"The day is historic," Cunningham wrote home on a BlackBerry handheld wireless device. "And from a rural village in Kenya, I already feel the change."

As a follow-up, he e-mailed family and friends this Thanksgiving to thank them for contributing more than $25,000 (or 2 million Kenyan shillings) for Muhuru Bay's nonprofit Women's Institute for Secondary Education and Research, where he works as executive director and aims to enroll its first class in January 2010.



"They give us a better life" - Nov. 11, by Cristina Kumka

Students at Rutland's Christ the King School experienced Veterans Day in a unique way, as they do every year - learning about service, dedication and patriotism from the people who have lived it.

The day before their annual Veterans Day ceremony - which attracts a large crowd of war veterans and their relatives to the school's gym - the meaning of the holiday was already sinking in.

Grade 4 students said they felt obligated to commemorate the day in school, instead of having the day off, because veterans gave so much to them.

"We celebrate in honor of them so they can hear what we want to thank them for," said 10-year-old Jenna Eaton.

Dylan Potter, 9, said, "I think it's important. If no one serves our country we wouldn't be here."

Joshua Emerich, 9, had something similar to say about why he was practicing "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "America the Beautiful," for today's concert.

"We should be helping all the troops over there," he said. "They give us a better life."



"Spaulding student organizes collection drive" - Nov. 20, by Stefan Hard

Seventeen-year-old Ashley Cota of Barre looks forward to Thanksgiving, especially considering the holiday closely follows her Nov. 22 birthday.

But she gets even more excited about her tradition of getting together with friends on her birthday and collecting food for those who might not have such happy prospects for Thanksgiving.

For seven years running, since she was 11, she has organized a charitable drive.

Last year, Cota and several of her friends rented a travel trailer and spent the night next to the semi-trailer used in the local Stuff-A-Truck food drive, having a giggle-rich slumber party in their cozy quarters before helping with the event for the day.

Cota knows both sides of the "helping out" equation, and her generous annual effort has a deeper personal meaning for her than it might for most teenagers. When she was in elementary school, her mother was a single mom, and for a couple of years times were tough.

"There were times when we didn't have enough money to put food on the table," said Cota. "We used the Salvation Army because otherwise we would have been unable to have dinner at night."