Letter to the Editor - Community impact is everyone's responsibility

Last week’s edition showed Beer and Loathing being handed the Community Impact Award by the Kimball Banner County Chamber of Commerce. Heather and I would like to thank this community for that honor and for giving us a shot here in Kimball, making us feel welcome. We know it is difficult to trust unfamiliar faces.

Well, we plan on becoming the familiar.

Kimball stands in the Panhandle ripe with potential. I have heard tales of its greatness when oil once spewed from the ground and Boeing planted diplomacy in the countryside. That game changed when the wells dried and industry left town. Kimball wilted slowly like the once-vibrant coal mining communities of West Virginia. Now it’s an echo of former glory.

Living here the past few years, I have noticed that Kimball houses bright, kind, and earnest folk. We like this place. And it lies with us all to restore it. Kimball will flourish once more but only with the care and effort of its people. We cannot wish things were better or complain about how the quality of life isn’t what it used to be;

we have to get our hands rough and dirty and make it so.

That’s why Heather established Positive Spaces, a fledgling not-for-profit organization seeking to engage citizens into improving our community, our patch of earth. She orchestrated the shoe drive as a way to test the waters, and things turned out beautifully. People were burying us in unused boots and sneakers for months. That shows how eager people are to renovate our public places, and it was all coordinated and realized by Heather. I’m so very proud of her.

So here we are on the threshold: we have a town in need of aid and a group of healthy, able, and willing people. Kimball cannot revitalize itself. Its streets and structures all give way to the whispered promise of time. Now is the time to give a crap enough to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps. We are all charged with returning Kimball to its namesake: The Highpoint of Nebraska.

Sincerely,

Nate Entingh