This Week's Nominee
| | Our 2022 Community Partner
While the challenges continue, so do the good works done by our neighbors, our teachers, our health care providers, our volunteers and so many others. This is their story. Ledyard National Bank is proud to support the 2022 Hometown Heroes, who were nominated by members of the community and selected by editors of the Concord Monitor. Nominate your Hometown Hero Today. |
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| | Hometown Hero: An act of generosity from a stranger spurred a family to pay-it-forward each year
By RAY DUCKLER
Monitor staff
The mother and her three children hardly noticed the older gentleman getting his hair cut at a shop in Epping. |
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| Krista Butts, formerly of Bow, was busy lassoing her boys while waiting for their turn. They ranged in age from 2 to 7, and when the customer’s haircut was finished and he had moved to the lobby, the tornado surrounding mom swirled toward the open seat, landing with a thud.
“They were acting as boys do,” Butts said during a recent phone interview. “Maybe he saw them running around, and maybe he thought I had a handful.”
He certainly saw something he liked, because the man paid for the boys’ haircuts. Then, poof, he was gone. The bill was $18, minus tips, thanks to a complete stranger, and this happened nearly a dozen years ago when the family had money troubles.
Butts never forgot. In fact, it changed her life. Her generosity prompted Josh Milne, an old friend from Concord High School, to nominate Butts for the Monitor’s Hometown Hero award.
Here’s why: The family buzzed out of the barbershop that day long ago, and Butts instantly sent the boys across the street, to a Walmart. She told them to give their newly purchased gift cards – bought with money saved from the free haircuts – to people there who looked as though they needed one.
They dragged their 2-year-old brother through the aisles, but mission accomplished.
Inspired by their mom and their hair-raising experience, those kids have continued to wrap Christmas into a bow of unselfishness 11 years later.
Meanwhile, Butts founded the 25 Days of Christmas Kindness project, shortly following the kind gesture that actually pushed her to build it.
Christmas cheer is annually spread in the form of poinsettias, gift bags, candy and Christmas decorations, and you never know where something will appear. The festive event begins Dec. 1 each year and concludes on Christmas Eve.
The simple gesture of providing a free haircut for someone and then disappearing without a trace moved Butts to act.
“I was overwhelmed with emotion,” Butts said. “They needed haircuts, and we needed the money.”
Butts was a full-time mom, caring for the boys while her husband worked as a police officer. “We were hurting, struggling,” Butts said. “We could not afford daycare; it’s not cheap.”
Their oldest child is now in college and the other two boys are old enough to free Butts to work. She’s an academic interventionist at Oyster River Middle School in Lee, where she moved 44 years ago. She teaches math and reading to students who need a little more help than other classes can provide.
She’s been a mortgage underwriter and a wildlife instructor. She’s busy this time of year. The 25 Days of Christmas Kindness program has grown since it was founded 11 years ago, sparked by the man in the barbershop.
Residents are encouraged to do one act of kindness each day during the 25-day period. Basically, Butts has created a pay-it-forward community, hoping the generosity and unity will spill out, year-round.
The anonymous gentleman with an extra 18 bucks in his pocket made a difference, causing an impact he surely never thought would travel this far.
The good deed came about a week before Christmas, circa 2010, when the kids were small and the bank accounts light. The children were getting their annual haircuts a week before Christmas, sprucing up for their visit with their grandmother in Bow.
“She said it was taken care of when I went to pay her,” Butts said. “I didn’t know what she meant. I was overwhelmed.” |
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