In this week’s paper, we are proud to reveal our 2024 People of the Year honorees, an annual celebration of the public officials, civic leaders, educators, business owners and volunteers who went “above and beyond” in the past year to ensure our community remains a caring and supportive place to work and live. The winners’ stories of service, dedication and perseverance are always inspirational, and our editorial staff takes great care and diligence in selecting them.
We also rely on you, our readers, to help us, and several of this year’s winners — including People of the Year Kevin Davis and Tom Najdzion, who joined forces to help bring Riverhead’s beloved annual Polish Fest back to its former glory.
There was another powerful insight we gleaned while flipping through the pages — or more likely, scrolling through the links — of our 2024 papers: the remarkable number of people in this community who go “above and beyond” to support worthy causes, help neighbors in need or simply do right by others every single day. Folks like the members of the multiple area fire departments who traveled upstate to help their fellow volunteers battle the raging wildfires this fall. The Orient marine rescue squad who — with an assist from the crew of Cross Sound Ferry — rescued two passengers aboard a distressed sailboat in Plum Gut in early December. The anonymous workers on a barge who pulled four baymen from the water after their oyster boat overturned in Peconic Bay as members of the Cutchogue Fire Department responded to the October incident. The dozens of Riverhead police officers who volunteered their time to take a group of local school kids on a holiday shopping spree in the first — and we suspect not the last — Shop with a Cop event at Target. The many friends and neighbors who rallied to support Mary McCabe after her Greenport home was destroyed in a November fire and the more that 800 individual donors who helped raise nearly $100,000 to support members of the Morales family displaced by a fatal fire in Mattituck. And we can’t forget Miguel Dominguez, the cool-headed teenager who helped deliver his baby cousin this summer while on the phone with a Southampton police officer from his home in Flanders.
Perhaps even more remarkable — and equally deserving of recognition — are the countless volunteers, municipal workers, teachers, residents and business owners who support our schools, fire departments, veterans organizations, not-for-profits, rotaries and civic groups. Their contributions are truly beyond measure, but they serve as a constant reminder that all of us, in our individual ways, can live each day as people of the year.
The post Editorial: Unsung heroes appeared first on The Suffolk Times.