The Ozarks has always had its own way of taking care of people.
More than a century ago, a minister living in Lebanon wrote a novel about a town like ours.
The hills were our hills.
The streets were our streets.
And the people — well — they were us.
The book was The Calling of Dan Matthews.
It told the story of a young pastor learning what it really means to serve a community.
Not from a pulpit.
But in the hard places.
In the homes where families were struggling.
In the lives of people others ignored.
In the quiet work of showing up when someone needed help.
Its author, Harold Bell Wright, would later write The Shepherd of the Hills, the novel that introduced millions of readers to life in the Ozarks.
But the story he told in Dan Matthews began here.
Because long before programs and agencies existed, people in these hills understood something simple:
When someone is hurting, you show up.
When a child needs help, you step in.
In the Ozarks, this is what community looks like.
(Photo: The view from Ha Ha Tonka)
