A focusing on White County
EDITOR
Stephen Zeigler    27 Sep 2003

Many law enforcement officers on the job for decades have seen so many people do such awful things they become cynical and callous about humanity and the cities they serve.
    Not Searcy Police Capt. Kyle Osborn. He grew up here, remembers hunting deer where the River Oaks community now stands. He loves Searcy and its people.
    "If you're a wild, let-your-hair-down-and-party type of guy, you'll have to go to Little Rock," he told me on the phone, not knowing I don't have enough hair to let down. I did once, but when I let it go it took off and went.
    "But if you want a safe, beautiful place to raise children, Searcy's it."
    Osborn said the biggest crimes here are forgery and theft.
    "There's about one homicide within the city limits here about every eight years. I've been at this job 20 years and I've seen three."
    I believe what Osborn told me, and I do talk every day with people who never intend to leave Searcy, and others who left and came back.
    But Osborn and I both know the town isn't perfect. There's poverty, children so neglected courts have to step in, substance abuse and, yes, hunger and despair.
    Last week I saw troubled families facing court intervention, in danger of being split up.
    White County, population 68,000, has only eight foster homes, far too few for most of the kids needing them. Too few adoptive homes, as well.
    I saw children cry because there were no foster homes to take them in. I saw children with fragile presents and
futures, hurting and scared. Here. In White County.
    Most people in this lovely, loving community don't know how much they could contribute. They don't even know how very much they are needed.
    But many of those same people would find time if they knew how much difference they really could make.
    "When people know about a need, their goodness just rises up and things happen," Mary Green, who helped start the volunteer group Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) in White County, told me.
   CASA provides advocacy for dependent and abused children to the court, giving the judge information to help decide what will be best for a child in a dysfunctional home. They are part of a network of systems helping neglected children that includes the Department of Human Services and the Department of Children and Family Services. You may have heard of them, but you may not know how much they help this community, or how much more help is needed.
   There are other issues and institutions in White County we need to know better. The voters will decide act. 7 whether or not to endorse a tax for a new jail. The answer will affect every- one in White County. So will a new, state-of -the-art 9-1-1 system coming to the Quorum Court act. 9 for thumbs up or down on the project.
   The education reform issue, too, will affect everyone whether we have kids in school or not.
   It's likely that if you knew more about these issues you'd want to take a role in determining our county's future.
   Self -government requires citizens empowered by information, citizens debating and weighing the questions of what kind of world we want to inhabit. But many of us don't know enough about our community to be empowered. We ride around our towns every day, but habit blinds us to it.
   If you can't get the information you need to take an active role in the issues of your community, it's our fault, this newspaper's fault. But we're trying to do better.
   Tomorrow we begin a new Sunday feature, the Focus page, appearing opposite the opinion page. Each week we'll look in depth at an issue or institution affecting our lives in White County.
   It isn't really a news page or feature page, but more an analysis and information page.
   CASA volunteers are helping save our children, one child at a time. Tomorrow, we'll tell you about them and others working to rescue children at risk.
   Right here in White County. You could help, too.
   The Focus page will give you depth information about problems and options. Sometimes it will give you information about things in White County you believed you already knew, but perhaps not well enough.
   It will be a celebration of what this county is and a window to what it can be.
   When we live in a place a long time, we inevitably look past things because they are so familiar we don't believe they hold surprises. The Focus page is meant to show us the surprises happening in front of us that we don't see.
    The Focus page will take many forms and looks.
    We hope it will always be surprising in what it tells us about our community and how we can make a difference in it, enlarging ourselves by sharing our- selves.
    The Focus page is meant to empower you because knowledge does that.
    We hear a lot about freedom, but usually it's in terms of "freedom from" things like oppression, fear, bad guys and boogeymen. But in a community of informed, deliberative citizens, we gain freedom TO govern ourselves wisely and participate in the growth of a com- passionate, healthy world.
    Tomorrow, we Focus on White County.

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