Posted on 24 February 2013 by La Habra Journal
Often organizations present a volunteer of the year award to outstanding individuals who give their time to help make something better. Looking around our community, there are hundreds of individuals giving their time and energy toward making something better. Now, not to seem cheesy or cliché when pointing out the efforts of volunteers, but we wouldn’t have a community without them.
Websters Dictionary defines volunteer as “a person who voluntarily undertakes or expresses a willingness to undertake a service as one who renders a service or takes part in a transaction while having no legal concern or interest.”
So many people give of their time in all aspects of the community, from workers at church bake sales and Little League managers to PTA board members, city committee members and Girl Scout cookie organizers. It includes the family members who help out in an elementary school classroom all the way to city council members in La Habra Heights. It includes the members of the many service organizations in the community like Rotary, Elks, Moose and Lions.
Volunteers help with organizations like Advance, HBIC and Rosie’s Garage. They are the people who clean up, cut paper, organize, plan, oversee, mentor and guide and many other duties. They are of the community and give of themselves to help out. They do the jobs that need to get done, and often the jobs that most people don’t want to do. Even without experience, they are the ones who step up and commit to helping in whatever the task might be. They don’t do it for praise, they don’t do it for accolades, they don’t do it for money. They do it because they want to and that they believe in whatever the mission is. Volunteers are the unsung heroes of our community. They are what helps us grow as a community. These individuals deserve our thanks and appreciation. I only wish that there were more room to recognize them all in the pages of the Journal. I wish they could all be volunteers of the year.
This section of the La Habra Journal is set as a commentary. I have realized that I have been writing it more as an editorial. The editorial of a newspaper is the written view of the newspaper as a whole and therefore doesn’t have a byline of an individual who wrote it. This section of the Journal has always been a commentary. That means it reflects the views of the person writing it and therefore deserves a byline to say who wrote it. We will begin including the byline of the person who writes it. My hope is to allow for other members of the staff to express themselves in topics related and of interest to the community. The majority will still be written by me, but the opportunity to hear from the rest of the LHJ team is there. As always, I thank you for your time in reading this and for your support of the only independent community newspaper covering La Habra and La Habra Heights.
—The Editor