I woke up this morning (January 19, 2026) to historian Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from America" of January 18th, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, where she looks at the meaning of heroism.
While "writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre..." she says
...I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.
I was filled immediately with people, and with the great privilege, during my time as an archivist and oral historian in the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre, of having met so many such people, and being immersed in them, in life and surrounding me in the archives. And while this page will fill up with time with others, and perhaps even with some stories, the people who came to mind immediately were the onsite team at Toddington during the long final years, who gave more to the place and the people who used it than I can express, sometimes under extraordinarily difficult circumstances ("Taking one for the team", in the words of Rich Rollinson), and who believed they had done enough from the ground to change the financial direction of travel. To the two alternative streams mentioned in the Introduction to Section 5, and not mutually exclusive of either (or, indeed, the one chosen), there was a belief that the knowledge was now there, and all that was needed was the freedom to proceed and another person to help with the organisation and care-taking of events in particular. The momentum of belief and purpose of the Trust, of course, lay elsewhere; and I don't think anyone will ever know what they gave, and what that required of them. But an archive of love doesn't just happen, if that's what, at the best, we achieved; and what we achieved, we achieved because of the house, and the grounds, and the kitchen, and the housekeeping, and the office....the people....pretty spectacularly at times, and at times pretty perfect.
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