Once again, a little town in the middle of New Jersey has made national news.  Hightstown's Mayor and Council are in line for the National Humanitarians of the Year award.  (If there is not such an award, I propose one.)

Individuals who feared calling the police when they had been wronged, even severely wronged, have crossed my path with regularity.     I even confronted one employer who abused employees by not paying them one penny of the money they were due, as if daring them to seek recompense. Another person asked us for advice for dealing with an employer who kept propositioning and stalking her, and threatened to report her to immigration if she complained to authorities.

How ironic, sad even, that acting to provide a path for righting such wrongs, for having compassion, for having respect for the rights of others, has become a media event deserving of national, even worldwide, attention.

What the out-of-town media missed is another story or two; three, even.

Sure, we have a lot of people who came here seeking a way to provide food and shelter for their families.  Some of them have hungry loved ones

"back home" to whom they send money.  But not all of them are Latino.

Sure, Hightstown's one-time empty stores are now 100% occupied and buzzing with business.  But not all of them are Latino.   Storeowners range from Indian to Chinese to, yes, South American, to Italian, to Russian, to African, and more.  Walking through Hightstown is like walking through International City.    It reminds me of cosmopolitan Washington, D. C. when I lived there many years ago.  Peddie School has contributed to this metamorphosis, with their diverse population, largely due to Annenberg's huge contribution set aside for the purpose of making a private-school education a possibility for all who earnestly do seek.

Sure, Hightstown is much livelier, energetic, prettier, but that, too, can be attributed to many, especially, the Revitalization Committee, and they are certainly not all Latino.

For years we complained about lack of public transportation, making getting to work or to services difficult for the low-income population.  Newcomers came, saw the problem,  and resolved it by starting fleets of taxicabs!     Not all of them are Latino, either.

And by the way, have you noticed how diverse the Latinos themselves are?  Newcomers may be from Guatemala, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, etc.   While all speak Spanish, even the language is not all the same.  One word can mean one thing in one version, and something else in another.  There are cultural differences too.

There is also the irony.  And to me, this is the biggest story of all.

This is not, as I alluded earlier, the first time Hightstown made national news.  I moved to Hightstown in 1965.  A few years later the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) began a regimen of burning crosses regularly on Friday nights.   Upon reading of this, the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in New York City made plans to visit Hightstown, march in the streets, in protest and in defense of the unbeknighted.  Upon hearing of the JDL's intentions, the KKK made plans to confront them.  Rumor had it that they planned to transport fire arms into the town.  The Black Panthers, hearing this, also made plans to be present, just in case.

A bunch of us joined in the parade and marched all around the town, visiting spots where burnings had occurred.  And, oh yes, the media was there too.  All of this did make national news.

We were scared, but then we heard

that the then Chief of Police was rumored to know who the KKK people were, and it was said that he stopped them on the edge of town and searched their trunks and removed their firearms.

After the march, there followed a lot of milling around in the middle of town, on the sidewalks and the grass near the library.  Then all the visiting clans and clubs dispersed and the rest of us in unison expelled a long-held-breath.   Because some of the stores practiced that old Southern custom of reserving the “right to refuse service” to anyone they so chose, some of us were limited to where we could mill.

(Often, people think Hightstonians don’t know how to spell.  Spell Check agrees with them.  They seek to correct our spelling, “It is really spelled Heightstown, right?”.  Wrong!  In fact, the town is named about John and Mary Hights and reportedly, they really did mill.)

The troubles were not over, but eventually, one step here and another step there, an incarceration here, an improvement in relationships there, Hightstown emerged from this morass, progressing nicely until this very day, when the media again has noticed this charming little town, except that now TV trucks are doing the milling around, not even aware that they were recording a complete transformation.

Note that one of the forward steps taken was creation of the Hightstown/East Windsor Human Relations Council to negotiate peaceful resolutions.  One of that Council’s innovations was to start a little nursery school/day care center, which they named “Better Beginnings”.   The KKK burnings came, as I recall, after, not before, those first fifteen children who were “suffered to come unto” the dear founders who were so caringly involved.

Presently, many children are learning their second language at Better Beginnings before they enter public school in a school district which, unlike the Abbott districts, is not granted the means to provide full day Kindergarten, much less full day Preschool.  So at Better Beginnings, the after- Kindergarteners also learn to read in their second language.

Incidentally, I wrote the first draft of this column from beautiful downtown Hightstown, sitting in my favorite "cyber" cafe, the Slow Down, nibbling away all the while on a beautiful, fresh, very tasty salad, large enough to last me all day, watching people come and go, all as diverse in age and culture as the town on whose street corner it sits.   Not only do they choose to serve me, they ask me nicely, warmly, convincingly, to come back often, and I will.

Afterword:  These newcomers revitalized a town where many stores were empty.  Their children will be the ones who save more than a town; among other aspirations, they will be paying taxes; running the government; exercising the opportunity, if they so choose, to rescue our social security system and Medicare.  Let us continue to be nice to them, okay?  Maybe then they will continue to be nice to us.