After living through the tumults of the past few weeks, what a relief it is to live in a place like Bethel, New York. County people hold strong opinions about this and that. In the end, though, we consider each other neighbors, friends, allies (even) in the pursuit of happiness. May acrimony live on, elsewhere if it really wants to; here, we’re much more about living together and settling differences amicably. To listen to the BubeTube or to YouTube, you’d think such places don’t exist anymore in America. They do, and we are proof of it. 

We shine as a fine example of what is still possible in rural America where people see and talk to each other at the bar, the fire station, the potluck, the post office, the place of worship. We have problems and disagreements but we don’t hate each other. We should be proud of our communal bondedness and lack of tribes. We should shine our collective light outwards whenever others assert America is a nation split into irreconcilably warring camps. Let’s shine now and be thankful for where we are and how we do it.

And speaking of pronouncing gratitude. Recently Jonathan Hyman left his post as President of the Smallwood Civic Association (SWCA).  Hyman’s four years at the helm of the 70-year old organization were eventful and full of sometimes controversial accomplishments. The changes wrought by him and the two successive Boards of Directors he led have nonetheless been given scant public acknowledgement. This paper, the Sullivan County Democrat, is the paper of record hereabouts. It’s time someone wrote up the script of what Hyman and two Boards of Directors accomplished in Smallwood (and beyond) in their four years of largely unacknowledged toil. Here’s my attempt to do so with a few final words at the end.

Under Jonathan Hyman, the SWCA Board of Directors 

1) Began the long task of addressing environmental dangers threatening Mountain Lake, Smallwood’s central and unifying geographical feature; 

2) Exercised daily guardianship of the lake to ensure consistent water quality for inhabitants of the hamlet, fishermen, and swimmers throughout the year; 

3) Revamped the moldering association lodge (now renamed the “Association Lodge and Park Complex”), imbedding it in beautiful plantings which make it a desirable venue for rentals, concerts, community-building events (like the Pride Dance and Children’s Carnival which they also instituted), and public concerts and lectures;

4) Constructed a fantastically-outfitted playground near the renovated Lodge boasting all new-facilities and encouraged a fledgling group called SYE (Smallwood Youth Experience) to use the previously-underutilized Lodge as a four-night-a-week youth ‘clubhouse,’ liberating kids at least in the summer from slavish bondage to their mobile devices; 

5) Installed a basketball court and paid for interim repairs to the Association tennis and pickleball courts;

6) Completely re-imagined and rebuilt the Association boat launch;

7) Enlarged the Smallwood Beach by one third (!), renovated a huge stone-walled fire pit for communal use, installed a French drain to inhibit sand erosion to the beach, painted and renovated the snack shed and identified and removed many dangerous trees and branches overarching Association property; 

8) Successfully obtained buy-in from voting Association members to update and revamp the Association Constitution and By-Laws to better reflect current NYS law and future Association needs; 

9) Clarified Association finances then publicly published timely financial reports on them in accordance with NYS law;

10) Re-created a functional and informative Association website and regularly published an Association newsletter (“Small Talk”), making good on their promise to make regular communication between the Boards and the membership a top priority;

11) Helped ensure that Smallwood remains a place of rest and peaceful enjoyment by parrying some interests intent on using Smallwood as a kind of short-term rental hotel;

12) Wove Smallwood more firmly into the larger fabric of Bethel and Sullivan life by inviting public participation in such events as the Children’s Hallowe’en Walk, the Smallwood/Mongaup Valley Firehouse Christmas Toy Drive, the Labor Day Bethel Fireworks, and multiple free-of-charge handouts of masks and tests during the Covid crisis.

I’m sure more accomplishments could be listed but these stick out to me as the SWCA’s main achievements over the past four years. Now, while everyone agrees that “change is difficult but change is good,” change is rarely welcome. Our little hamlet in the woods is no longer the hamlet it was in 1928, 1954, 1991, or 2019. Change came to Smallwood in the past four years because overwhelming majorities of SWCA members wanted change and agency in the form of Jonathan Hyman and the two Boards which served under him. 

Together these elected men and women assumed the reins of a somnambulant SWCA, reinvigorating old timber and making it sprout. Almost from whole cloth they created a new organization of informed and active citizens and in so doing invented a new template for community involvement at the hamlet, town and county levels. 

I think what began here in Smallwood four years ago has overflowed the boundaries of Smallwood; just attend any Town Board Meeting or Town Planning Board meeting and see a reactivated citizenry, anxious to write its own Comprehensive Plan. Surely, surely going forward into 2025 this is exactly what our town and country needs: a citizenry convinced of its agency and ready to shoulder the burdens of civic responsibility.

So it’s time the simplest words of all are said. Thank you, Jonathan Hyman. Thank you, SWCA Boards of 2020 and 2022! You have run the hard race, and we (all of us hereabouts) are the winners.