DEAR EDITOR:

We hear so much bad news these days; therefore, I wanted to share with you some good deeds recently performed by community members. These are the things that nobody notices and nobody reports.

On Saturday, July 4, I stopped at the GetGo on the corner of Southern Boulevard and Route 224 in Boardman to put air in my bicycle tires. There was a car in the parking lot with Texas plates and a flat tire. He was traveling in a car loaded with six people, including two young, crying children.

The lug nuts would not budge. He was stuck in a parking lot in Ohio, with a carload of people, in the baking sun, on the Fourth of July. It was easy to see his frustration. He had been there for some time.

After talking with him and trying to loosen the lug nuts myself, I decided to drive back to my house for more tools. On my way, I called Canfield Towing in anticipation of needing more “heavy duty” tools than I could produce. I spoke with the owner, Dave Rach. I explained the situation, and he told me he would be on the way.

When I returned to GetGo, a young man named Aiden had stopped for gas, noticed the struggling man with the flat tire and started to work on removing the tire. Aiden works at Pep Boys, so he had some tools on him and had managed to loosen two of the lug nuts.

We then employed the tool that I brought, and we removed two more lug nuts; however, the fifth one was stripped. We were stuck!

A short while later, Dave Rach arrived. As it turns out, Dave was not working that day, as it was Saturday and a holiday. Also, it was his birthday, but he showed up to help anyway.

Dave had his work cut out for him. He needed to break a casing, pound a socket onto the lug nut to make it “fit,” and then used his heavy-duty tools to remove the final lug nut. Dave and Aiden put the spare tire onto the car and got the travelers on their way.

This took over an hour. Nobody took any money. Everybody helped because it was “the right thing to do.”

I hope that somebody else may be inspired by the good deeds of these two men and by those of untold others who perform unnoticed acts of kindness every day. If we all do a little something to help, we can solve many problems together. We are all in this together.

I want to recognize Dave and Aiden for being good people. The world is not as lost as it sometimes appears to be.

PHILIP BOVA

Springfield Township