Looking over the last year in LCN pages, the story that kept drawing us back was our tribute to the late R.H. “Bob” Reny, who left us in July.
At the time in our editorial, we said, “In the sense that he started with nothing and through hard, hard work and lots of it, he built a small fortune for himself, Bob Reny actually epitomized the American Dream. He didn’t sit around waiting for his break to come. He got off his duff and made his break.”
In our story we outlined the guidelines Reny used to build his company from a door-to-door, out of the back of a car operation, into a 14 location, 400 employee-strong Maine landmark: Work hard, protect your credit and treat people with respect.
In an earlier story, we reported his son John recalling when Walmart first appeared on Maine’s horizon, the Renys went and scouted out their competition. They quickly realized, John said, they were going to need to work better and harder to survive, and they did.
We think we can take a lesson from the Reny model.
This year as we watch our federal and state leaders flail at the issues before them, why don’t we forgo the big picture partisanship and focus on the issues before us?
Even if Lincoln County was of one mind, and we aren’t, we can’t ease the national debt, we can’t fix our national economy; we can’t by ourselves improve Maine’s business climate.
We can however change our community for the better. We can buy one extra morsel of food for the local food pantry. One more box of macaroni and cheese in our shopping cart may mean little to us, but it is one more meal for someone else.
We can donate old clothing to the People to People Center who will make it available to people who need it. Throw a couple bucks for the Community Energy Fund when you see the jar. We have neighbors who are going to need their help.
This space paid attention to Morrison Bonpasse a few weeks ago, a man who has the nerve to say that he is trying to change the world and one with the naiveté to believe he can and the guts to actually go about trying to do so.
Reny was right. Bonpasse is right. Little by little, if we just do what we can, we can change the world for the better.
