Recently the Hanna Recreation Center hosted 150 young adults and 50 adults on their way to a competition in Indianapolis. The group was the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps (Vanguard). The Hanna Rec Center was suggested by a town employee in Medicine Bow when Vanguard explained their reservations in Laramie had been messed up and were looking for a place to stay and had two days to find a place.
The staff at the Hanna Rec Center listened and welcomed Vanguard to their place.
The buses arrived on a Monday evening, the kids werequickly followed by Vanguard’s food trucks and chaperones.
The kids range in age between 14 to 21 and were coming off a bus ride of nine hours.
Vanguard is one of the thirteen founding member corps of Drum Corps International (DCI) and a DCI World Champion, having won the title for the seventh time in 2018.
They are currently ranked number one in the country.
Hanna is not a big place, so when the four buses with its entourage came pulling into town, it was noticed.
I imagine there was more than one text message buzzing about to find out why all these kids were in Hanna.
Many of the kids could be heard exclaiming about how great the Hanna Rec Center was.
I may be biased, but I totally agree.
When I first came to the Rec Center, it cemented my decision to move from Saratoga to Hanna. It has a swimming pool that would be competitive for races except there are only six lanes instead of eight, racquetball courts, basketball courts, weight rooms and skateboard park, make this one of the best small town recreation centers anywhere, in my opinion.
The staff and kids were happy to be in Hanna and off a bus.
The next day, the group was out before the Rec Center opened and the staff of Vanguard told the rec center staff how happy they were and hoped to be back next year.
The Vanguard group went that morning to Omaha to give a concert and then they were headed to Indianapolis.
I talked to several kids before they left and I found out Vanguard is made up from people all over the country. It is amazing what this group has accomplished over the years. I was also impressed with how respectful all of the kids were.
Later in the evening, the staff at the recreation center were alerted that a wallet and ear buds were left by one of the kids. The boy, who I will call Jay, was fairly desperate to get his wallet since he was traveling.
His mother was contacted and arrangements were made to get the wallet to the post office and sent to where Jay’s mother could pick it up, since she was departing for Indianapolis.
She was thankful the staff at the recreation center was making the effort to take care of the problem.
As promised, the wallet and buds were taken to the post office and our postmaster got on the phone and worked everything out. Then there was the glitch. The post office could not take a credit card. The cost was under $10 and the postmaster, and others offered to pay to get the wallet to the boy. Maybe because a good Samaritan had come to my rescue not so long ago, I was one of the people who offered. But I want to make it clear, I was not the only person who offered when they heard the situation at the post office.
It turns out the town of Hanna paid for the wallet to be sent and asked the mother to send a check.
I talked to the mother personally, and she was blown away how responsive the people of Hanna had been and the town itself.
The mother said the family lived in a small town in Texas of about 100,000 (she is the one who called it small) and her post office would never have gone to the trouble the Hanna postmaster had.
The mother said she was a legislator in her town (I did not ask exactly what she meant by that) but she doubted any of the residents would have offered to pay for the wallet out of their own pocket to help a stranger. She was pretty sure the town certainly would not have come up with the money, even if it was under $10.
She told me her son loved the recreation center and said it was the nicest one in the group’s travels this year. She said Hanna must be a special place.
Having remembered how I had been helped in Saratoga the month before, I told her Carbon County residents were generally like this, and it was not just Hanna.
Her parting words were, I was lucky to live in such a place where Americans are still kind to each other and strangers.
She is right.
I am lucky and proud.
I love that there were several people who offered to help these strangers. It could have been tough to get through, if the wallet had been left in a place that was cynical and could not be bothered to help.
I have always felt Carbon County residents were a special lot. I can probably even say this about Wyomingites.
But it sure feels good to be told this by a person who lives outside the State.
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