You can tell by the way people talk about him today that R.H. “Bob” Reny was a special kind of man.

He connected with people in a special way. He was a salesman sure, but he was a man who would look you in the eye, firmly shake your hand, inquire after the health of your mother and recall the names of your children.

A truly great man has passed and there are many grieving hearts of those who loved him. There will never be another Robert H. Reny. For those of us who worked for him and with him, he became part of our lives and we would like to think that we became a part of his.

Along the road of life, we meet people who leave lasting impressions. Bob Reny is one of them.

In addition to the disastrous school consolidation, state take-over of county jails, LD 1 and Dirigo legislation, now we also have LD 1495. LD 1495 is touted by the state as “tax relief” for Maine families and businesses and that the tourists will bear the brunt of the “exported” taxes: not so!

Last week, we said goodbye to one of our most enduring and entertaining columnists, Chris Cooper and his beloved column, “In the Garden Wet With Rain. We can safely say beloved because we have had no end of responses from fans in house and out all expressing some sort of regret about Mr. Cooper’s farewell.

I would like to report a random act of kindness.

Many years ago my husband and I placed a stone bench at the end of our driveway as a way of preventing those leaving our house from “cutting the corner.”

I feel so sorry for our veterans who gave their lives for people like Michael Jackson. He received so much glory when he died. I guess being a drug addict and some of the other things he was accused of doing made him more important than the brave men and women who have given their lives in the defense of our country.

As a member of the Edgecomb Fire Department and current Asst. Chief I am the one used to responding to people in need of help but in the early hours of Fri., July 3, I found myself in need of help.

If we were in a boxing match, it would have been stopped by now.

If the State of Maine were in the ring with all-time champ Mother Nature, by now the ref would have pulled her off of us as we hang helpless on the ropes; wrapping his arms around us to keep us from falling and muttering into our ear, “It’s not your night, kid. It’s not your night.”

This is written in response to last week’s letter by Gearry Ranger which called Carl Scheiman to task for his earlier letter on these pages.

Things are pretty quiet down on Rutherford Island on a holiday. So it was as my other half was at work on July 4. I was home alone, in the garden and wishing I had gone to the parade.

On Thursday, June 18 at 1:30 p.m. while driving on Main St. toward Newcastle I stopped at a crosswalk by Renys to allow pedestrians to cross.

What would our Founding Fathers think if they could see us now?

Our Founders deserve a lot of credit and rightly so for creating a form of government that, for the first time in history, recognized the rights of all (free, white) men, and gave all (free, white) men a say in their form of government.

It is hard to argue with a fire department. You might as well call a spandex-clad superhero a sissy.

Firefighters, by dint of their profession, are heroic public figures hell-bent on saving lives rescuing people and generally spending long hours in the saddle in the name of community service.