Just a note to begin: at the end of this blog post I’m going to ask you to consider buying something – but not from me or for me.

It doesn’t involve me at all.

While the shock for most of us following the February 2009 crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence, NY has subsided into sort of a regular part of our subconscious (life must go on but quick, snap your fingers….51 people dead, just that fast, wow) for those directly affected…I can only guess life will never be the same.

I don’t know how other communities deal with such events as I’ve never studied it. Yet I’m assuming that many of the same things that have gone on in Western New York following this event have happened elsewhere.

So maybe the story I am about to tell you isn’t necessarily unique but – as we’ve never had such a catastrophic tragedy like this before – it’s new to us. But more important, I think, than the story of community this tale will tell (because that is very much what this area is all about) is the story of simply doing the right thing. It’s so simple it seems almost effortless.

A t-shirt.

That’s all it is. A silk-screened T-shirt sold by a locally owned and operated retail operation called Tony Walker & Company which is owned locally by its parent company, The Advantage Company. They sell lots of nice stuff including high quality t-shirts. They do this every day.

When the crash happened, like everyone else the owners and employees evidently wanted to do something. We were really all so helpless doing nothing more than staying out of the way, letting the professionals do their jobs and praying a lot. That never seems like enough…at heart we all seem to be workers, doers, action-takers. For a while, though, it felt like all we could to was sit and stare.

But we shook that off and got to work. Tony Walker & Company did too. They did what they knew how to do. They designed a t-shirt (the logo is the picture in the blog post) the proceeds of which will go directly to help the Wielinski family into whose home the plane crashed and whose husband/father died as a result. He and the passengers and crew were the only fatalities of a plane crashing into a completely residential neighborhood.

I keep thinking that’s the oddest combination of a tragedy and a miracle all at the same time.

You can buy the t-shirts here (many styles and colors) and if you do, I would like to thank you also for doing the right thing.

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