Opinion: Look for the helpers

Fred Rogers was many things to many people in his 74 years living on this earth. He was an educator and a minister. He was a songwriter, author and a TV host. But most importantly he was a symbol of kindness to millions of children and young parents alike for over 40 years as the host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on PBS. Through his years he handled a number of tragedies and wars in his soothing peaceful way, and it is weeks like this one when we should be looking to him once more. The Boston Marathon tragedy that occurred just over two days ago took the lives of three and seriously injured scores of others. It is always hard to stay positive in times like this. With darkness and fear creeping out of the abyss of evil and again striking our nation, one could not be expected to mentally recover so soon. Because of this, it is the positives we must look toward to build us back up, not just in the midst of the chaos on Boylston Street in Boston this past Monday but the positives across our country that again prove the good outnumbers the evil in this world. Mister Rogers knew that. As children he would lead us onto the trolley and into the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Though as adults, we don’t have the time or often the mind required to forget the world around us. That is why we must remember something quite simpler: “Look for the helpers.”In the comforting way only Mister Rogers could present, he tells us a story: As a little boy when something bad would happen in the news, his mother would tell him to “look for the helpers. You’ll always find people helping.”  Young Fred Rogers discovered that this was true, and that it is “one of the best things about our wonderful world.” It is important to remember this. Don’t look at the explosions and don’t drown your heart in images of the blood on Boston’s sidewalks. Look for the helpers.Look for the police officers whose first action was to sprint into the smoke with regard only for lives that are not their own. Look for Carlos Arredondo, originally known simply as “the man in the cowboy hat.” Arredondo is the father of a marine named Alexander Arredondo who was killed in Iraq in 2004. At the time of the explosion, Carlos was handing out American flags at the finish line, an action he often performs as a tribute to his son.Following the first blast, Carlos Arredondo leapt over the fence and ran toward a young man on the ground whose shirt was on fire and was seriously injured. Carlos tended to and comforted the young man, now identified as Jeff Bauman, until emergency workers arrived on the scene; even helping wheel him to an ambulance.Look for John Mixon, too. A 60-year-old man from Maine, John was seen in his black sweatshirt tearing down a fence so fellow helpers could get to the victims. The stories of heroism, no matter how small, go on and on. To something as simple as a firefighter known simply as “Tyler” who helped to calm a woman with serious shrapnel wounds by showing her his own shrapnel wound from Afghanistan, to the scores of runners that crossed the finish line after 26.2 miles and continued to run two more miles to Massachusetts General Hospital to give blood to victims. People like these can give hope to a country in its darkest hours that good will always win. Because as Fred Rogers would say: “If you look for the helpers, you’ll know that there’s hope.” We should be proud that these are our neighbors.