A Reflection On January 26, 2026

A Small Grace In the spring of 2000, Julie and I left Union County for a farm near Goreville. We left behind friends whose company had shaped our days, and we left behind Sheriff Jim Nash—a man who understood that his work was not merely enforcement but service, a tending to the community as one might tend good land. Moving always brings uncertainty. We wondered what kind of place we were coming to, whether we would find neighbors who knew the old obligations, whether the county's servants would understand that their work was owed to actual people, not to abstractions. The answer came quickly, in the way such things do in small places. Julie had driven to town for the mail. When she came out, one tire was flat. She called, and I started for town, but I needn't have hurried. By the time I arrived, the Johnson County Sheriff, Elry Faulkner, had already pulled over, positioned his vehicle to shield her from the road, and changed the tire himself. This was not duty. This was neighborliness wearing a badge. It was a small thing, perhaps—one flat tire, one act of help. But small things reveal the health of a place. They show whether people still remember that we belong to one another, that our lives are woven together in ways no law can mandate but that good character makes inevitable. We knew then that we had come to a place that still remembered these things. We had come home. We need such men and women now, perhaps more than ever—officials in every county and town across this country who understand that the law is not an abstraction to be wielded but a trust to be kept, that order is not imposed by force but grows from the soil of genuine care. May those who wear the badge in our time learn the craft that Jim Nash and Elry Faulkner practiced: the patient skill of serving neighbors, the quiet competence that builds trust, the daily choice to see in every stranded motorist or frightened citizen not a case number but a fellow human being deserving of dignity and help. The health of our communities, the very possibility of living together in peace, depends on whether such servants can be found—or whether we have forgotten how to raise them up. This is not a small thing. It is everything.