Local author Fred Osmon finds that researching one book can lead to another.
His latest release, Chatham N’ Kent’s Heroes, focuses on 100 of this region’s unsung heroes, and it was his research into the history of minor ball in Chatham and baseball in the region in general that led him to search out these heroes.
“I was doing the history of baseball in Chatham N’ Kent, and I was going through a lot of newspaper articles. I came up with a lot of unsung heroes,” he said. “I started a file, and as a result, I’ve got a book.”
Osmon said as he scanned the newspapers on microfilm looking for stories on baseball, he kept coming across pieces written on everyday people going above and beyond.
But he added he received inspiration while in church, as the idea of tracking unsung heroes came to him at Holy Trinity Church, where the minister’s sermon was on that very topic.
“I’m sitting at the back of the church and then realized, ‘That’s what I’m going to do with my book,’” Osmon said.
He chose a 100-year period – from 1914 to 2014 – to showcase the heroics of 100 people – one a year.
From young Leslie Needham, 14, rescuing two chums from the thin ice of the Thames River in 1935, to Roy Marlatt, 16, saving a little girl from a fast-approaching train in 1942, to a paper boy, Ryan Lebreque coming to the aid of one of his elderly customers in 1998, Osmon’s book covers a wide variety of heroes.
But he admits it’s only the tip of the hero iceberg in C-K.
“I haven’t got them all, of course. We’ve got a lot of unsung heroes. There could be a Volume 2. This is just 100 people,” he said. “People leave their work, see a situation, throw themselves into it, save someone’s life, get back in the car and continue on their way.”
To him, being such a hero could also include saving a child from starving, or the work the nurses from the VON do on a daily basis.
“Those women come into people’s homes during palliative care lots of times and quietly go about their work. You never read what’s going on,” he said.
Then there are volunteers, such as the Chatham Goodfellows, an organization to which Osmon has long been affiliated.
“All these people are heroes and the kids don’t know them,” he said of the organization that delivers toys and food to children and families in need during the holiday season.
Osmon said the book is written in “Readers’ Digest” style, as “you read the story and the next page has a different story.”
He has a book-signing event at the Chatham branch of the public library on Dec. 10 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
For anyone wishing a copy of the book, they can contact Osmon directly as well, at osmonre39@gmail.com.
This is Osmon’s sixth book. His seventh – Our Town, I Remember, I Remember – is in the final stages and should come out next year.
Other works include several cookbooks, offering both healthy recipes and those for cookies, as well as his two books on baseball in the area.
