A refreshing read in an age of 'personal brands' and the like. I thoroughly hope there are others cut from the same cloth, doing the same kind of quiet good work today - not for pageviews or followers, but because it's the right thing to do.
Like a dark planetary body that invisibly perturbs the motion of an incandescent star, I suspect it's only by their influence on others who have fame that such people may be found, like the casual dedication on a park bench that turns out to be... unusual.
Quiet good work I cannot speak to, but two that inspire me are the former Guns n Roses rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin and Mark Knopfler. Stradlin quit drugs, quit the band even when the band was at its peak, and basically makes music for himself now. You'll be hard pressed to find interviews of him on YouTube because he'd rather be riding his motorcycle. Knopfler has been doing gods work by weaving intricate storytelling into gentle rhythms for decades now.
I enjoyed this, and was impressed that it was written by a high school senior.
I had to smile a little at this endearing bit of young naïveté:
> The first thing I discovered was that almost nobody — not my parents, not my high-school teachers — knew who Stover was.
I would be surprised if they did know.
If someone living in New York feels tempted to visit the memorial bench mentioned, why not take a moment to snap a picture and add it to the Charles Bunstein Stover Wikipedia article?
Not sure which is worse: clickbaity titles or mostly nondescriptive titles