Virginia Larsen will not allow us to exalt her as a super-hero who attempts great things no one has ever thought of and then, and against all odds, accomplishes them in an history-setting manner. Those weren't her words, because hers were both honestly humble and transparency self-effacing. Being a good neighbor and citizen requires nothing so much of anyone as random acts of kindness, common decency, and ordinary civility.

What she said -- what Virginia Larsen said when accepting the annual award from the Austin Human Rights Commission -- was: "I haven't done a great and wonderful thing, but I've just kept going along." That is to say, as I hear her: Let's make award-winning achievements in human affairs everyday, ordinary things. Let's do them not because we hope for recognition, but because other people need our attention.

I know of many wonderful things Virginia has done, but I know of them just by having been around her and watching. I hear of them just by listening around. I experience them just by being near her. While she would have us come upon good deeds as a matter of our daily walk and what is ours to do, which we usually can -- and while this is the goal of what I write here -- I still need to recognize skill or talent or whatever it is that makes Virginia Larsen stand out (not apart in kind but above in quality) the rest of us is an uncanny seek-and-find talent and a why-didn't-I-think-to-do-that insight. So often I have learned of her new project and thought: Of course, these people should be helped; followed by: Of course, it is Virginia who thought of it.

Anyone who works for an award of this sort doesn't deserve it and shouldn't get it. What I am encouraging here, and I think Virginia will say "amen," is just do what we know we should do.

Virginia Larsen also said this: "Austin is as good a place as any to be a friend to all."

Dr. Wallace Alcorn’s commentaries appear in the Herald on Mondays.