Edmund Murray

Almost any work day you can see Edmund Murray outside the Ellsworth Public Library. In the winter he’s shoveling. In the spring and summer he’s tending to the amazing flowers that adorn the library’s sides, front and back. His long, lanky form sometimes blends in with the giant trees on the library’s front lawn.

He whistles sometimes.

And if you wave at him, he’ll always wave back.

I don’t know Edmund very well but every time I see him I smile. That’s because there’s this essential grace about him, an essential gentlemanliness.

Sometimes that charm is lost in our current culture. People hustle by. People forget that there moving past other people with lives and dramas, sick parents, hungry children, houses that are hard to heat. But you can tell just by the way Edmund moves that he’s not like that. He notices every person who walks by him. He’s not a loud man. He’s not a super extrovert when he’s working, but he always, always nods hello.

That’s kind.

But the things that make Edmund a community hero are more than that. First, he takes care of the lawns inside the library so well that almost any given day you can see a child sniff at the petals of a pin or yellow flower, or run towards the trunk of a tree to give it a massive hug. The inside of the library is just the same… neat, clean, safe, a place of beauty. In a culture where so many people are jaded about the effort that they put into their jobs, Edmund just works. He works efficiently. He works with love. That’s heroic in itself.

It’s more than that though. It’s also how Edmund interacts that makes him a hero. Last week I was driving back from dropping Emily off at school. The roads were pretty nasty, slushy, slippery. I was driving down the hill by the library when I noticed Charlene Clemons waiting to cross the street. I stopped. Edmund was out shoveling the sidewalks. He saw Charlene trying to walk across the slippery stretch. He leaped forward and hurried to the roadway where he reached out a hand and helped her cross, a gentleman, a hero.

Edmund is the type of man who notices when someone needs help. And when they need help he gives it.

That’s being a hero.