Last weekend, we printed a neat feature highlighting local author Richard McGee’s efforts to capture the history of the Civilian Conservation Corps’ impact on Missouri. When I assigned the story, I thought it would be a great way to kick off the summer — pointing people toward fun, educational weekend adventures.
I got more than I bargained for. I hadn't realized there was such a lack of historical documentation on the subject, and with that dearth comes a deeper context as to why McGee’s book matters so much.
We love to read about our own history. One of the core purposes a community newspaper serves is to document these historic events. Not just the major catastrophes or huge donations, but the little things: marriage and birth records, social club meeting notes and individual efforts to contribute a single thread to the tapestry of the Ozarks. We preserve the stories of the people who built the physical foundations of our parks, and the people who were the foundation that raised us. They planted trees, laid stones and became parts of stories that outlived them.
But building a legacy isn’t just something that happened 100 years ago. It’s happening here and now.
This week, we reported a $1.1 million legacy gift to the Community Foundation for scholarships to Missouri State University-West Plains and a memorial fund established for Paula Speraneo — a champion of Ozarks arts and culture to her very last day — awarded its first grants to the Yellow House Community Arts Center and the Lincoln School Project.
When we talk about donations and grants like this, we’re talking about more than money. There’s an old proverb: A society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they shall never sit. In other words, when we think about our legacy, we ought to think less about ourselves and more about a future we may never live to see.
Legacies can take many forms. They can be structural, like the buildings erected by the CCC workers, or financial, like investments made in local youth and culture. Or, maybe, the legacy is left in words.
Sometimes, we measure a legacy in column inches — the physical space it takes to tell a story in a newspaper.
The obituary for Marideth Sisco, once dubbed a living legend for her storytelling gifts, is printed in today’s paper. Fittingly for her, it takes up almost an entire page. I did not lend any of my own words to it (though if I had to guess, she probably lent a fair share of her own while she had the chance), but I’m certain I could not have exercised any more brevity. Hers was a full, impactful and vibrant life. Beyond the page, her legacy lives on in the environment she advocated for and the stories she told.
And what stories they were. She and Annie Noblin, both.
By the time you read this on Saturday, I will be deep in the middle of hearing both of their stories told in other people’s voices. Annie’s celebration of life was Friday evening; Marideth’s will be Tuesday afternoon. I am steeling myself to hear those stories as I write this.
Right now, I am looking at the meaning of “legacy” through a microscopic lens.
On Thursday, Friends of Ferals relocated Annie’s colony of cats that I’ve been helping care for over the past few weeks. I’m emptying out my living room to make room for a new couch. Because of both Annie and Marideth — whose infinitely wise and irreverent voices live on in my heart and mind — I am enacting major life changes of my own, one small step at a time.
Life is too short to stay stuck, after all.
You see, their legacies aren’t just in the books they wrote or the songs they sang. They actively live in those of us left behind to remember them.
I suppose this is why it struck me so deeply when my 19-year-old daughter made a public tribute thanking me for being brave enough to live my truth in the Ozarks and for raising her the way I did. All I did was set boundaries, hold expectations, and try to model the kind of adult I hoped she would become. I am just lucky enough to know she feels that way while I’m still here to hear it.
I think, really, that’s what legacy is all about. At the end of the day, it’s not just about buildings bearing your name, endowment funds, or massive obituaries. It’s about the way we show up for each other.
Legacies are made when we love our neighbors, when we care for the most vulnerable among us and when we come together as a village to raise our children to be brave, kind and authentic.
Because in the end, when we’re gone, how we treated other people is the story that lasts the longest.
