It is time for Perkins County, Wallace residents to remember how to do hard things
By Becky Uehling
Grant Tribune-Sentinel
Editor
We have monumental challenges ahead as we see the globalization creeping closer to our doorstep, and an economy teetering on the edge. When I say we, I mean every single person in the Perkins County and Wallace area. And when I say challenges, I mean recapturing the essence of community, personal responsibility, individual talents, ingenuity, and capitalizing on the self-sufficient know-how that allowed our communities to be birthed and thrive in the first place.
It is time for local communities and citizens to regroup and take inventory of how to sustain ourselves, weaning ourselves off of any state, federal, or global dependence, and teaching our children to do the same.
It appears that one of our first challenges will be to see if we can secure elder care in our county.
God bless Mark Bottom. The courageous bravery of this former local sheriff and Army Sergeant are traits that every man and woman, but especially men, young and old, should be looking at and emulating right now as we fight to keep elder care within our community.
Instead of taking the decision of the end of elder care in the county at face value, Bottom put the brakes on, took a step back, and basically said, “hold on, folks, let’s see what the possibilities could be.” It’s this type of attitude that we must all adopt as more and more challenges continue to pour into our state, country and world.
Can elder care be maintained in Perkins County? The question looms large and the hurdles are precarious. However, at least Bottom stepped up and said, “let’s give it a try,” no matter what the outcome will be. This is the courage that we all must emulate. We need more leaders like Mark Bottom desperately right now to help lead our area in strengthening our resolve, remembering our ancestral roots and grit, and giving us the ability to see what we, as a community, are capable of accomplishing, WITHOUT corporate America and the world elites. We CAN do hard things if we come together as a community.
During his Memorial Day speech in Madrid this year, Mark alluded to Perkins County’s and Nebraska’s finest as he relived a precarious night in Iraq. During his service in the Army, a convoy he was with experienced a broken down tanker carrying jet fuel.
Instead of waiting for a long period of time in a dangerous area for a recovery team to arrive, the group of men from Nebraska, who had been created to be a laundry unit, but reassigned as a transportation detail, came together, taking a bad situation and turning it around in a matter of hours and bringing everyone back to base safely, with the jet fuel.
Or how about the Elsie fire a month ago. One gentleman I was talking to, who had moved to Grant from a bigger city not too long ago, was amazed about how so many citizens came together in the dusk and dark of night, like a well-oiled machine, to work in unison to stop the inferno from engulfing homes on the prairie. “Amazing,” he quipped, especially because the group had no fine-tuned emergency disaster plan leading them, but their own ingenuity.
As Bottom eluded to in his Memorial Day speech, Perkins County residents are made up of hardworking, common sense, people, whose lifestyle requires resourcefulness and making decisions on their own. It is this mind-set that will harden our communities as we face the pressing down of global challenges to come.
We can do hard things, and we will, together.