Our Loss Of Community — By Tommy Purser

It was fun Saturday afternoon to gaze down upon the young ladies with beaming smiles, smiles so big they seemed destined to leave stretch marks on the young girls’ faces. A lot of people in these parts don’t give a hoot about those girls. In fact, I suspect most folks around here wouldn’t care if those youngsters ever smiled this school year, or next, or next, or …. ever.
But I do. I care.
The young ladies …. young girls …. youngsters …. whatever. of whom I speak are the teenagers who these days walk onto basketball courts here and in other communities in south Georgia and beyond, to represent themselves — their families — their coaches — their school — their community — and, yes, you and me — and our friends and neighbors — all of us — as they pull on their blue and gold jerseys, their shorts, their socks, their shoes, and run up and down the basketball courts in search of victories — in search of pride — in search of ways to win, ways to make themselves proud, their coaches proud, their teachers proud, their classmates proud, their community proud.
They probably don’t realize it, but in their search to make themselves and others proud, they also seek to make me proud … even though, to be honest, few of them even know I exist. Few know how I sit in the stands and quietly root for them. How I look through my camera lens searching for photographs that will make them proud …. or make their parents proud … or make their coaches proud …or make me proud.
Make me proud that I can still take an occasional decent photograph but, more so, that I can do some little something that will make those girls proud that I care. Or simply to make them aware that I care. I don’t think they realize there are people they don’t know who really and truly care about them … about how they play.
And I care about the boys as well.
Just as fervently, in fact.
I’m a member of a dying breed. A breed of folks who experience great joy from the efforts children — our children — make to excel on the arenas of play.
Efforts good and bad, exemplary and only average, only average and poor, but efforts nonetheless to win, to excel, to reach heights that surprise even themselves.
There was a time when communities far and wide gathered en masse to cheer for their youth, to applaud their successes, to shed tears, collectively, when their children fell short. To be there. Through wins and losses, successes and defeats, highs and lows, smiles and tears.
That’s what I’ve watched communities do throughout my lifetime.
But ….
Times change. And with time we lose much. We lose our sense of community.
And without that sense of community, we fall far short of what we could be. Short of how happy life could be.