The above lines came to me as I thought about my visit to the Webster City Rotary Club meeting a week ago.

On the agenda was Tim Bailey, a missionary in Romania and son of Doug and Nancy Bailey, of Webster City.

Doug and Nancy are known by their friends and colleagues for their good works, but lately that has been eclipsed — and I say this in a good way — by the efforts of Tim and his family and colleagues in Romania.

Through his group Youth With A Mission, he has refocused a good portion their collective efforts to serve as a refuge and resource for people in Ukraine. To help accomplish their great services, Rotarians in Webster City, with the generosity of themselves and others, have given financial support to the tune of around $42,000.

When we think of leadership these days, we are inclined to assume that our hired or elected officials are our leaders. But in my (sometimes) humble opinion, the true leaders of any community are the ones who stand up for what is right simply because it is in their hearts. They owe no one their jobs; they have no constituents to whom they must listen. The true leaders of any community are the ones who listen to their hearts and then act.

So it is with Webster City Rotarians and those who join them in their causes.

Why is this point so crucial? It’s crucial because at the center of every successful venture, every flourishing community, there is a rock solid core of good. In Webster City, I think that core is the Webster City Rotary Club. And its latest example is the passionate outreach to people on the other side of the globe.

Our world is not a static world. Change is constant. This has been underscored to me lately as I peruse the back issues of the newspapers that went before this one, looking for news bits to publish in Turning Back the Pages of Time. I have chosen to go back 100, 90 and 80 years because it is instructive to understand the trials that have shaped us.

For instance, 90 years ago, we were in a midst of the Great Depression. The generation that was my parents’ lived through those years of despair and want.

Ten years later, in 1942, we were facing a world war. Many of us had parents who went to war. At home, towns were asked for financial support and individuals learned that sugar, of all things, was going to be rationed.

The thread that runs through all of this is the human spirit. The spirit of goodness. The willingness to give, and then give again. And the joy, often bittersweet, that results from doing the right thing.

That is what matters, and that is what will manifest success. As we go forward, working together to create the best community possible, we can look to examples such as those Webster City Rotary has placed before us. We can cast a glance back at our past and feel pride for what our ancestors achieved, and we can carry both visions with us as we act to make this a better place for everyone.

In that way, each of us becomes a leader.

How do we do that? We do it like Rotary: together.

Jane Curtis is interim editor of the Daily Freeman-Journal.