Everyday Heroes

Channel 9 features 'Everyday Heroes'
BY JOHN KIESEWETTER | JKIESEWETTER@ENQUIRER.COM



Heroes come in all types, big and small.

That’s the message of “Pepsi Everyday Freedom Heroes,” a local TV special (9 p.m. Friday, Channel 9) profiling the “Everyday Freedom Heroes” honored in November by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The six range from a Canadian boy campaigning to end child labor and a Rochester nun helping feed the poor to Arnice Smith, a College Hill children’s librarian who holds after-school study sessions for at-risk students.


“I don’t think of myself as a hero,” says Smith, a Cincinnati native and Cheviot mother of two. “Because for me, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is why I am here.”

Smith started shelving books in 1982 as a part-time job at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. She has been a College Hill branch librarian since 2001.
Two years ago, she was one of 27 U.S. public librarians to receive The New York Times’ Librarian Award for outstanding community service.
The one-hour special, by local producers Jim Friedman and Addie Rosenthal, shows Smith providing dictionaries, calculators, paper and other supplies for her after-school study skills sessions.
Also profiled are Craig Kielburger, who as a 12-year-old in Toronto started “Free the Children” to stop child labor; Sister Beth LeValley, who works with Rochester poor; Azim Khamisa, a San Diego man promoting peace and forgiveness after a gang member murdered his son; Karin Rivas, from the Clearwater-based Florida Center for Survivors of Torture; and Daniel Beaty of Dayton, who performs a one-man off-Broadway show about race relations.
They were selected by the Freedom Center and Friedman’s company, which created the TV program two years ago. This year’s recipients were a departure from last year, when most of the honorees had an international impact.
“Last year we were looking at the absolute best, those who had done the incredible. This year we were looking for a balance, so people could see themselves,” he says.
All of the show’s music was composed by Cincinnatians Wes Boatman and Tom Steele. Most of the dozen people making “soap box” comments about freedom in the show are from Cincinnati.