Look for the Helpers
Weekly update #275 4/27/2025 to 5/3/2025
Fred Rogers once shared, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping’." I will try to share about some of those helpers over the next several paragraphs and my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.
This week, the Redevelopment Commission reviewed and awarded several Quality of Life grants. I won’t go into each award, but they covered items like additional equipment for the Seymour Fire Department as they replace Ladder 3 here in the next month or so, and another item they approved was helping provide funding for the Tree Board to continue their efforts to add to and maintain the public trees here in Seymour. While some requests are not able to be funded for various reasons, I can’t say thank you enough to them for all the work they put in trying to help our community.
This week, I was able to join mayors from around the state at the Mayor’s Institute hosted by Ball State University and Accelerate Indiana Municipalities. A large part of the conversation was around the recently passed Senate Bill 1 from last week and how to plan for the expected impacts. During another session, we had a chance to discuss innovation with the former mayor of Indianapolis, Steve Goldsmith. This session alone created a few ideas that went into my notes to be fleshed out over the coming weeks to see if they can become reality. To Ball State and AIM, thank you for trying to help all the cities and towns here in Indiana grow and learn.
This week, we unfortunately had a chance to, as Mr. Rogers put it, “look for the helpers.” Those helpers come from many different places. Some have been training their entire careers, while others faced fear and showed their courage in the blink of an eye. While the comments I shared with Madison from WLKY, both on and off camera, as events unfolded after the active shooter at the Jackson County Public Library were not used as a major part of her coverage, I will reshare some of them here in my weekly update. In those comments, I thanked the good samaritan for his actions in restraining the shooter until the Seymour Police Department arrived. Good work to the Officers with SPD for their quick and skillful response. I would be remiss if I didn’t include dispatch as well because they provided valuable details to the officers on scene. To the officers from additional agencies who also responded, as they often do, thank you for being a part of our community. To Seymour Fire Department for helping with traffic and providing a buffer for a nearby daycare. To the library board member who helped arrange an after-action meeting for the employees to sit down together with a mental health expert. To members of the local clergy who came together both on the day of and in the following days to be available for people to talk with. To the gentleman who quickly started helping get people out of the building. To the good samaritan and his girlfriend, who called 911, thank you for being helpers in a time of need. Before I leave you with the full quote from Fred Rogers, I will take one last time to say thank you to those I have mentioned, any others who had a part, and those who reached out with offers of services because you all were helpers in a time of need for your friends and neighbors here in Seymour. "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world."