In a way, Cathy Lander-Goldberg is like an Unsung Heroes whisperer. She has an uncanny ability to discover people, primarily women, who truly are courageous, resilient and inspiring, but who probably would have gone unnoticed had she not identified them,...

When Beth Saltzman was 12 years old, she got her first volunteer experience, helping out at Congregation B’nai Amoona. She remembers going to the synagogue on Trinity Avenue in University City. “We’d put out the kiddush cups and pour the grape...

When many people think of retirement, they think of slowing down. Not Nancy Wasserman Giannasi. After 34 years as an occupational therapist in the Special School District, she wasn’t ready to stop making a difference. In the past two years, Giannasi,...

Every spring, Alan Kirby’s classroom at Seckman High School in Jefferson County, Mo. shifts gears from its regular curriculum for one day. Kirby teaches German at the school, which is located about 30 miles south of St. Louis. During this special session,...

Working jigsaw puzzles is a rare means of relaxation for Sue Picus. The volunteer work regimen she has so happily embraced has also been a piecemeal activity. But Picus has taken the latter to a far more grandiose scale. The long-time registered clinical...

On a trip to Seattle some years ago, Dr. Bruce Frank and Enid Weisberg-Frank encountered a man begging for food. They offered to help and took him to a nearby restaurant. Their new acquaintance had difficulty ordering a meal. “It took us a minute to...

Reflecting on her younger years isn’t always easy for 79-year-old Helene Meyer, especially when she compares them to now. Today, she feels fulfilled. Productive. In the moment.  As artistic director of Slaying Dragons, a nonprofit whose mission is...

As an idealistic teenager, Amy Kuo Hammerman thought about a career as a lobbyist after seeing the movie “The American President.” Annette Bening played a glamorous lobbyist, Sydney Ellen Wade, who was also the love interest of Michael Douglas, the...

Murray Bresler is the kind of guy who will help people he’s never met. They could be people in St. Louis, in another city or halfway around the world. He’s also the kind of guy who finds a way to help a nonprofit organization facing a challenging...

It was just an average March morning at Dorris Intermediate School in Collinsville. Elizabeth “Betty” Baumgartner’s sixth-graders were filing back into her room after music class when she saw a boy make a gesture that she had never seen a student...

It wasn’t long ago that the St. Louis Jewish educational community faced a crossroads. The lack of a beis midrash — a post-high school yeshiva to provide advanced Torah study —meant some families were moving out of the area and others chose not...

Michele Friedman Siler describes herself as “unsung” by nature, a person who “hides from cameras, ditches photo opps and doesn’t look for publicity.” The idea of being honored by the Jewish Light as an uppercase Unsung Hero just doesn’t sound...