By Staff
An event to raise money to help protect the Pamlico-Tar River. An event to raise money for and increase awareness of the fight against cancer. Members of the Mormon Church helping clean up the former Bath High School site.
They either have taken place or will take place this weekend in Beaufort County. They are prime examples of people caring for someone or something other than themselves.
Take the Pamlico-Tar River Foundation’s Race for the River Kayakalon conducted Saturday. Just before it began, PTRF Executive Director David Emmerling delivered a message to participants and onlookers.
The money raised by the third-annual fundraising event will go to PTRF, a nonprofit organization that works to protect and improve the environmental quality of the river and its watershed. PTRF sponsors the Pamlico-Tar riverkeeper, an advocate for the river basin.
A clean, healthy river is good for everyone, from commercial fishermen who make a living from the river to boaters who enjoy the serenity that river provides to the aquatic life and wildlife that depend on the river to help keep them alive.
Then there’s the concert today, a concert of voices assembled to help fight cancer.
The Beaufort County Choral Society, The River City Ringers and The Next Chapter lend their musical talents to that fight today at 4 p.m. at Washington High School’s Performing Arts Center.
Cancer affects nearly everyone to some degree, including members of the choral group. Some of its members won’t be singing today because they find it difficult to sing and cry at the same time, according to choral director Laura Scoble. That shows cancer does touch the lives of many people, cancer victims and their families.
A group of Mormons in Beaufort County this weekend decided to help Bath folks and others preserve the former Bath High School, which means so much to so many people. Most of those volunteers, if not all of them, probably never set a foot inside the old school.
That doesn’t matter to them. What matters is that others need help in saving the school. They were answering that call for help.
It’s time more of us answered the increasing number of calls for help. Those who answer those calls will be helping others — and themselves.