My wife, Wendy and I, grew up right in Souderton – one of us on Noble Street, the other on West Chestnut Street. Wendy’s parents both graduated from Souderton High School, and were deeply immersed in the local area. Her father served as the Chief of the North Penn Goodwill Service, and her mother worked at Indian Crest and later, the high school. That was just the tip of their iceberg in terms of being involved in the community.
Wendy and I both attended Souderton High School as well. Both of us played sports at both the little league and varsity level, and were also involved in other school and community activities. In short, we were “locals” in virtually every sense of the word.
After completing our next level of education, Wendy at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, me at the United States Naval Academy, we got married in 1985. At that point, I was in the United States Marine Corps, and a move from our beloved Souderton area became a requirement.
When I was getting out of the service several years later, we had to decide where we would move and establish our newly expanding family. The conversation required to make this relocation decision was short and sweet – we’re moving back to Souderton. For us, it was a no brainer.
There is a quote by a gentleman named Bill Bishop who wrote a book discussing the meaning of a community in which he states:
“It used to be that people were born as part of a community, and had to find their place as individuals. Now people are born as individuals, and have to find their community.”
Assuming Mr. Bishop is correct – and I tend to believe that he is – that shift definitely occurred after the childhood that Wendy and I experienced. We entered a world that had established itself many, many years before our arrival. Businesses, churches, societies, and schools had all existed for nearly 100 years by that time, some of these entities much longer than that.
We grew up looking forward to Old Fashioned Days in downtown Souderton every summer. The Christmas Parade always promised to deliver candy, firetrucks, and frostbite each year. The Souderton Pool was a place you could go by yourself when you were still relatively young, because you knew most of the people that were there each day. In the fall, if you showed up at kickoff time, forget about getting a seat at the Friday night football games at the old Souderton High School. Fire Prevention Day drew crowds like a rock concert, and the Bicycle Rodeo was one of the hottest events in town, at least if you were a kid.
The Bottom Line: The cliché that “people looked out for one another” wasn’t a cliché, it was a way of life.
The result of all these things was a feeling of belonging to something. It was something larger than your immediate family, but also small enough that you weren’t lost in the shuffle. This was all extremely important to us when we moved back to this community in 1989, and remains so to this day.
Why? Because today, more than ever, there is a need for people to feel connected. There is a very real physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual value in knowing that a support network exists when you step out of your house. If the events of the past year have taught us nothing else, surely – they have taught us that.
So what does all of this potentially mean to us as members of this community we call the Souderton-Telford area? I would suggest it means three things:
First, by keeping the history of our area alive and accessible, we remind people that this sense of community is nothing new. We should celebrate what has made our area unique and successful, and honor and recognize those who are responsible.
Second, continue to build on the foundation that others have laid down in the past. Many of the things I recalled earlier are still taking place, and many new events and organizations are being created all the time. Look for ways to demonstrate our support for these things, whether that support is simply by word of mouth, or actively participating ourselves.
And most importantly, consider the words of Coretta Scott King, wife of the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said:
“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.”
It’s not just about events, committees, and organizations. It’s not just the cleanliness of the local park, how new the Community Center is, or the size of the high school. While these things are important, at the end of the day it is about how we choose to interact with one another on a daily basis, looking beyond just ourselves to the welfare of others… and the community.
