The Power of a Collective Dream

The dean of my college once told me, “You’ll do fine in life, Art, if you’ll just stay out of the details.” I have spent my life doing my best to heed his advice. Here is the way I look at it; in constructing the foundation of our nation, our Founding Fathers gave every man one vote, from the smartest and best educated to the simplest and least accomplished.  
To some at that time, it appeared to be a stupid thing to do, but the proof of the pudding was in the eating, it worked better than any system of government ever created! To me this means everybody has a contribution to make, so make yours, Art, and help everyone else to make theirs. 
Over the course of my lifetime, I have worked with some extremely gifted people, but mostly with ordinary people like myself just going about their lives. I have observed that everybody has limitations — gifted ones tend to have fewer, but instead, they have blind spots; together, we all balance one another out.
My father instilled in me the love and value of hard work; not only did it provide resources, but it taught me important lessons which have remained with me throughout life. As a child, I delivered papers for a newspaper in New Mexico, and over time, came to publish one of their newspapers, the Wildwood Leader, here in Cape May County.
After a couple of years, I left that paper and purchased Shout News, and later, the Cape May County Herald; it was founded by enterprising people as the Avalon Herald. I could never have made a success of the Herald on my own. Happily, I did not have to; in the early years, I had the good fortune to be able to work with gifted people: Darrell Kopp, Gary Rudy, Beth Huber and Joe Zelnik, to name only four. Per my dean’s advice, I did my best to stay out of their way. That original gifting of talented people has remained the norm over the subsequent decades under the leadership of Preston Gibson, Al Campbell, and Karen Dickinson. And today we are firmly entrenched in the digital age of journalism and advertising, thanks to their vision and the vital, young digital team under the leadership of Steve Dunwoody.
Jim Vanore, who gave so much of himself to the Herald over the years, asked me several times, “Where do you find such talented people?” I always pointed up. The final time he asked me, he did not wait for my answer, and said, “I know your answer: God brings them. I’m starting to believe that.”
We at the Herald know that this newspaper does not belong to my wife, Patricia, and me, in the truest sense. Rather, it belongs to the community, and all of us at the Herald are the stewards of it. Nor do I not think it would function under an absentee, corporate structure. Take Spout Off, for example; two decades ago many newspapers around the nation had their versions of Spout Off, but not today. To make it work, you have to believe in it and patiently devote time to it. I believe in it, have defended it through thick and thin and we have improved it over the years. Why? Because it is the voice of the people in a time when people are increasingly confronting difficulty in expressing their opinion on public affairs without encountering name calling, retribution or retaliation. 
Another example of community ownership is Cape Issues, which is a volunteer, non-partisan citizens group formed in March of 2008, by former Herald editor Fred Coldren, Tom Flud and myself. It works in tandem with the Herald to investigate the important issues of our county and report back to you.
Both Spout Off and Cape Issues give voice not only to residents but to non-residents who lack voting rights.
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I was born into a free, God-fearing country and am doing everything in my power to pass the same onto the next generation. We at the Herald thank you for your support, and for the privilege of serving you these last 50 years.
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From the Bible: You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.  For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:13-14