Across the country, hearts went out this week to the people of Parkersburg who lost a community leader, hero and friend.
Our hearts go out to Ed Thomas’ family, and to the Aplington-Parkersburg students who learned too early in life that good guys don’t always win.
Thomas wasn’t only a great football coach. He was a great man. His senseless murder, apparently by a former player, has shaken people who never even knew him.
Even worse is that the incident happened at the top of the town’s long, hard climb back up from last year’s devastating tornado — a recovery during which Thomas often led the way.
It defies explanation.
Most of us try to teach our kids good things will happen if they work hard and live an honorable life.
We teach them that, even though we know it’s not always true. Too often, circumstances are out of your hands.
Still, for as long as we can, we try to give them a world that is orderly and logical and fair — more or less. In Parkersburg, that simpler world was ripped away last week in a makeshift high school weight room, giving us one more reason to mourn.
The kids in Parkersburg will need extra support as they struggle in coming days and weeks to make sense of this violent and unexplainable loss.
Doubtless, it will take a long time for many to recover their sense of safety. Their faith in right and wrong.
But, like the coach told a New York Times reporter last fall: “You get beat up, battered, but you get back up off the ground.”
It’s no coincidence that people are using Thomas’ own words to comfort each other as they try to understand his death.
He was a man whose commitment, faith and ethics have inspired more people than he ever could have known.
He taught his players to be leaders, to support each other. “Do the right thing,” he would say. They listened, because he walked the walk.
Thomas knew the importance of being a role model, and this week there has been so much evidence of his influence.
You hear it in his family’s compassion for the family of the man accused in his murder.
You see it in the ways the community has come together in its grief.
You feel it when former students, colleagues, neighbors and friends describe how much he taught and how he inspired them.
Even in the face of this tragedy, you have to stop and wonder at a single man who made so much difference for so many.
It’s enough to make you believe in the good guys after all.
