Stan Shanker can barely knock on the front door before he’s greeted with excited yelps of “Uncle Stan! Uncle Stan!” They come from the four children of recent immigrants Ali and Israa, who range in age from 11 to 3. The older ones like to high-five...

Jay Umansky can still recall an elderly Russian army veteran he helped many years ago. The man was in his late 80s and spoke little English but needed a divorce from a younger woman he’d married who apparently just used him to obtain American residency. “Just...

About four years ago, Lenore Pepper and Susan Balk were at a board meeting for Camp Sabra, a Jewish overnight camp, when Pepper recalls getting “on the subject of things that were hateful.”“I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, I have got a story, too,’...

ABOVE: Cindy Lander Wallach started Birthday Joy in 2012. The nonprofit organization helps provide birthday gifts for children in homeless shelters or receiving help from social service agencies. Behind Wallach are her children, Abby, 13, and Dylan, 15....

Harvey Ferdman of Chesterfield is surprisingly calm for a man dealing with officialdom’s glacial response to what everyone agrees is a serious, perhaps imminent threat: a fire under a landfill that is adjacent to a radioactive waste site. He sighs;...

Ann Frank, a volunteer at Project Backpack, will ask others on her trips to collect toiletries from their hotel rooms so she can donate them to the organization’s clients. “She brings in bag and bags of toiletries,” said Judy Pearlstone, executive...

Shirley Mosinger’s bookshelves are filled with impressive volumes, from Irving Howe’s “World of Our Fathers” to a book of Chinese poetry her father gave to her when she was a child.Books and learning were cherished in her Jewish household when...

Her motto is “To Live Life Joyfully.” Recently, her students surprised her by showing up at one of her fitness classes wearing T-shirts that read, “We Are Living Joyfully.”The “Joy” in “Joyfully” also is the first name of Joy Millner,...

If Marvel created a superhero for volunteering, she’d probably look like Susan K. Goldberg. A self-described professional volunteer, Goldberg learned at a young age from her parents, Nancy and the late Jerome “Jerry” Kalishman, the importance of...

When Philip Deitch was in junior high school, his father came home from work one night after meeting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He asked Philip and his sister what they would do to fight racial injustice.So, in the eighth grade, Philip Deitch founded...

In 1972, when the then-president of the Covenant House board told Bonnie Solomon that she ought to join the staff of the housing facility, she was a bit skeptical. But he convinced her by saying it was only a temporary job, perhaps four or five months.“I...

Sometimes being an Unsung Hero simply means listening to other heroes. That’s a lesson that defines Carl Sherman of Creve Coeur.For the past three years, Sherman has volunteered with the Missouri Veterans History Project, helping to record oral histories....