Who are the people in your neighborhood?

Norm Miner is the coolest guy I know.

He isn’t cool in the rock star, movie star kind of way, he is the coolest guy in the humanitarian, “shoulda-been-a-preacher”, someone you’ll never forget kind of way.

He doesn’t turn down any request to help, ever. And that drives his lovely wife, Jane, crazy!

You see, when someone asks Norm to do something, he puts 110% of his time and effort into it. Maybe it’s his Yankee upbringing, I hear his father was a minister, but I think people like him are just born with it.

Take Black Creek Arts, for example. They want to do a fundraiser with a birdhouse theme; he goes into his shop and constructs scads of them. BCAC staff notices a beautifully constructed easel he made and ask him if he’d make them some for the studio, and he says “yes” (in that quiet way that ….of course… makes his wife Jane have to roll her eyes, because again, he’ll be in his shop for hours) and then this year, the cars for CarTrek have to be mounted somehow… guess who came up with the way to mount these guys? And who put in hours and hours doing so? Yup, Norm.

Car Trek

And remember Jan’s ramp? That wouldn’t have happened without his gentle urging, and the help of his loyal friends. He is the Kokopelli of the woodworking aficionados of Hartsville.

The house that Wesley UMC did for Christmas in April was not a one-day job; it just finished, and by my calendar its June, right? Norm met the elderly woman, walked through her home with his careful eye, and started writing a list. The woman now has a home that has brand new soffits (I don’t even have a clue how to spell that!) trim boards, new kitchen floor, new kitchen countertop, new bathroom floor, repaired shower enclosure, safety bar installed, and more stuff than I can remember. Again, he does bring along a band of loyal troopers that help. And even they shake their heads at how much he takes on.

Norm finally got to where he thought he was done with the Christmas in April house the other day, and said he only had one more morning to do a “few things” and couldn’t possibly ask his helpers to come another day. Grady Sullivan, another quiet humanitarian for another post, told me with a chuckle that Norm stopping by to pick up some caulk for the tub enclosure at his house resulted in Grady helping him that last day until 2:00 p.m. Grady chuckled when he told me about how when his wife, Brenda asked Norm’s wife, Jane, how the Christmas in April house was going a few Sunday’s ago, Jane took her fingers to her mouth and mimed the “closed with a zipper” sign. Grady said he asked Norm if they’d taken their camper out to go bird watching and camping this summer, and Norm told him the camper is “a little dusty”.

So now you have met my coolest hero, Norm Miner. There is probably more that he does that I have no clue about, and in fact, he just finished up a week as a delegate for the lay leaders at the SC United Methodist Conference. Ironically, the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, was a lot like Norm, and his famous quote really sums up Norm pretty well.

“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.”
~ John Wesley, (English Evangelist, founder of Methodism. 1703-1791)

With any luck, he will be traveling soon with Jane, giving her some of the attention he is so generous with. He won’t want any attention for what he does; he doesn’t turn down a request to help, because everything he does is “the right thing to do”. If you know him, don’t mention the article to him, it’ll just embarrass him- and for goodness sake, don’t ask him to do or make anything for you- this is Jane’s time…finally.