The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

It’s the day before Christmas Eve and all across the land...

Some call it fly-over country. Others might describe it as drive-through country. They are referring to parts of the US that most travellers don’t notice except from an airplane window or looking out from a vehicle hurtling along the highway. There aren’t many tourist attractions in drive-through country. You might need a bathroom break or maybe a snack along the way. Otherwise, for most it is largely forgettable.

Somerset County Pennsylvania is like that. It lies in southern Pennsylvania along the border with western Maryland and eastern West Virginia. Mining country. Outdoor country, with fishing in the summer, skiing and snowmobiling in the winter and hunting all year long. Your neighbour might live over the ridge, but in tough times there is a sense of community, sometimes born of dire necessity, that might be hard to find in the city or in its wealthy suburbs.

Life can be difficult in Somerset County. A big food market might be 20 miles away over some pretty rough roads. A movie theatre? You have to drive over to the next county to find one that’s still open. According to the recently completed 2020 census, the county population is at its lowest point since 1910.

Thousands of vehicles rush through the county along the Pennsylvania Turnpike every hour, but few stop over. On clear days you can see jet trails miles up in the blue sky. September 11, 2001, was a day like that. And thanks to the heroic, still too unheralded actions of the passengers on American Airlines flight 93 on that day, a huge jetliner crashed into a wood in the northern part of Somerset County, putting on the map forever the hamlet of Shanksville. But for the actions of the passengers, that flying bomb would have detonated in Washington, DC.

There’s a marvellous memorial complex at the site now, just off Highway 30, and it draws some visitors to the county. Brenda Thomas has likely been there, but she lives 35 miles to the south, over many ridgelines, and she has her own tragedy to live with. She has done that with courage and grace that has inspired many.

Brenda’s son Trevor Paul Thomas was born in 1998, so he was 21 years old when he died in a motorcycle crash in September 2019, one week after beginning his senior year in college. “It was the worst thing in the world,” Thomas told reporters of the tragic accident which also claimed the leg of Trevor’s best friend. Brenda recalled her son “was always kind to everyone. That’s just who he was”. Over 1,000 people attended Trevor’s funeral.

When Brenda’s time comes, even more may celebrate her life, because in the memory of her son she has started a movement based on “random acts of kindness” cards. She makes sure that at least once each week, she does some good deed for a complete stranger. She then gives the grateful recipient with the following message on it:

“If you receive this card, then you must be a recipient of a random act of kindness.” People who get the kindness and the card are encouraged to return the favour to someone else, creating a kind of chain of kindness – all in the memory of Trevor Thomas’s life.

Brenda and her husband started their movement by printing up the cards and leaving them in their mailbox for friends and neighbours who might want to join. “I was amazed by how many people came and got them,” Brenda later told the Washington Post. Many of the resulting good deeds are celebrated on the Facebook page #liveliketrev23.

“We will keep paying it all forward in Trevor’s honour because it would make him so proud,” Brenda said. She recalled one particular recent good deed she performed while visiting her daughter in Massachusetts.

At a restaurant for dinner, Brenda spotted a young mother with her nine-year-old son and five-year-old daughter. She quietly paid the woman’s bill of $100, gave the waitress a Trevor card for the woman and quietly left the restaurant.

The young mother is a 30-year-old bartender. After she got Brenda’s card, she researched and learned about the Thomas’ movement in honour of their son.

“I’m looking now for the perfect opportunity to repay this kindness for another stranger,” she said. “I want it to matter, because it mattered so much to me.”

• • •

Some of this might sound familiar, even if you’ve never had the chance to visit Tangier Island, Virginia. Tangier Island sits in the middle of the lower Chesapeake Bay, not too far north of the mouth of the bay at Norfolk and Hampton Roads with their huge US Naval bases, but a million miles away in its quiet atmosphere.

The “city” of Tangier, occupying part of this one-half square mile of sand nearly lost in America’s most significant eastern ocean estuary, recorded a population of 727 in the 2010 census. Now the number of residents has declined to 687. Tangier is officially listed as the 11,962nd largest city in the United States.

The island’s maximum height above sea level is three feet. All of Tangier’s residents are white and they make their living fishing for crabs or serving in the island’s modest hospitality business. A mailboat brings visitors and newspapers – and mail – several times a week. Visitors and returning residents often arrive via private chartered aircraft.

To describe Tangier as isolated is a significant understatement. Locals speak a brand of English that takes getting used to, and is often largely incomprehensible to newcomers. But at Christmastime, the Holly Run brightens up things considerably.

Now more than 50 years old and growing in scope each year, the Holly Run is a kind of airlifted Christmas present assembled by amateur pilots from the mainland. It got started by a mainland lawyer who noticed on getaways to the island that there was no holly there. He started loading his small plane with holly wreaths at this time of the year and donated them to island residents.

Now, dozens of amateur pilots use the Holly Run as an excuse to get aloft. They have expanded their cargo to include art and medical supplies and financial assistance for many of the island’s elderly, impoverished residents. A small annual campaign has begun, and this month the pilots also delivered cash donations of over $12,000.

Meantime, the island has become a kind of symbol for global warming. It is clearly fighting a losing battle against storm-driven soil erosion and rising sea levels. A recent gale pushed Bay water up to levels covering 90 percent of the island. Scientific studies estimate the island will longer be inhabitable by 2053.

The island got a big jolt of publicity in 2002 with publication of best-selling forensic crime novelist Patricia Cornwell’s “Isle of Dogs.” Cornwell, author of more than 30 blockbuster books most of which feature heroine and Richmond chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, has maintained some ties to Tangier Island and to Washington, where she does some of her meticulous research.

A recent trip to DC created an opportunity for a Christmastime visit for Cornwell with Wesley Thomas, a survivor of 29 years living homeless on the streets of the capital. Alerted to Thomas’ account of relying on her novels to survive his decades without permanent shelter or much hope, Cornwell arranged a personal meeting at a local church. After presenting Thomas with a copy of her most recent work, Cornwell reportedly noticed an inscription on the church’s stone wall:

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”