We Don't Need Another Hero: Helen Chappell

We Don’t Need Another Hero

by Helen Chappell

Because it’s been so hideously hot and humid all summer, even more than usual on the Shore, which could win a prize for hot and humid, I’ve spent a lot of time crouched in the air-conditioning. And I’m ashamed to say I’ve been wasting valuable writing and reading time streaming stuff.

Superhero movies seem to be the big thing here. You know, Marvel, DC, steroided-out guys in skin-tight latex fighting crime and having backstories about their origins. The stuff incel dreams are made of. I haven’t followed a superhero or heroine in years, with the exception of Dr. Strange, but hey, that’s Benedict Cumberbatch, and I’m just a weakwilled hormone when it comes to him. So, watching the superhero origin movies becomes something of a guilty pleasure. And I’m ashamed to admit that I dipped my toe into that gene pool, but I did.

After being amused to watch Shakespearean actor Tom Hiddleston drag himself out as Loki and, I’m sure, crying all the way to the bank, I began to look around me for real-life superheroes. I’m going to make a silk purse out of a sow’s

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ear here, because there are a lot of everyday heroes around who don’t wear latex or fly.

I’ll start close to home with Darnel, my friend and helper who cuts my grass and helps me with chores a woman of a certain age can’t do well anymore. Darnel’s uncanny ability to turn up just when he’s needed is one of his super talents.

The guys who pick up my trash every week are my heroes, too. If it weren’t for them, I’d have to haul my crap out to the dump myself, a job I never enjoyed. Just dragging those bags out of the house and down to the sidewalk is enough.

The town firehouse is about a block away. It’s staffed with true heroes ~ men and women who volunteer their time and put their lives on the line (often literally) for their community. Whether it’s a fire, a gas leak, a medical emergency, an accident out on the highway or worse, these people are there for their community. Volunteer fire companies are the spine of small towns. I grant

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you, they don’t always look like the firefighters on the calendar, but fire and rescue look awfully much like superheroes when they come to put out your fire or take you to the ER. That kind of selflessness makes for real courage. I’d rather have fire and rescue than Batman any day of the week. Batman isn’t going to extinguish a kitchen fire or check a gas leak for me.

Law enforcement has a lot of heroes. Granted, I’ve met a few cowboys in my career, but people like the late and much-missed Wade Roche, retired from MSP and erstwhile chief of police of St. Michaels, was one of the best people I ever met, in or out of public service. Himself a master storyteller, he would patiently read my Sam

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Another Hero enough to say he liked my writing and took the time back in chambers and Hollis Mysteries for accuracy to explain the whole court proceand, incidentally, some great point- dure to me. He was a good judge and ers on making a better plot. Wade a good friend, and I miss him a lot. has been gone for a while now, but He was a hero. he’ll always be a friend and mentor. The doctors and nurses and aides There are some real heroes in law who have looked after me in varienforcement, and they need to be ous stages of my health life are sucelebrated ~ from the freshest baby perheroes. Some of them have even trooper on highway patrol to the become friends. They don’t leap guys behind the big desks. tall buildings, but they do battle

On a related note, I don’t think I the mismanagement of healthcare could do a dispatcher’s job. If some- in our country. That’s a superhero one called 911 with an emergency, I’d thing to do. probably fl ub it, but these people do They come in all shapes and their job under what has to be some sizes, these everyday superheroes. of the most terrifying circumstances. They don’t wear colorful wrestling

If I’m thinking about mentors attire, and most of them do their and friends who are heroes to me, daily work quietly and without a lot I’d have to mention the late Judge of fanfare. William S. Horne. From the fi rst People like my editors are my sutime I stumbled, green as grass, perheroes. They’ve been here for me into his circuit court, he was kind in some dark times and some light times, and I have to say I’m proud to be associated with Tidewater Times in this, its 70th year. Mr. Rogers always said to look for the helpers. They are the superheroes in our daily lives. I hope someday I can be a superhero.

Helen Chappell is the creator of the Sam and Hollis mystery series and the Oysterback stories, as well as The Chesapeake Book of the Dead. Under her pen names, Rebecca Baldwin and Caroline Brooks, she has published a number of historical novels.