Silver City, Nevada - I’ve known poet and human rights advocate Shaun Griffin for many years, beginning way back in the 1980s when I worked at a preschool and after school program that his sons attended. Years later as an employee at Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey Counties, I worked with him on collaborative projects with Community Chest Inc, which he co-founded. And a few years after that, he joined the Healthy Communities board of directors and still serves as a board member today.
Years ago during a meeting, I was being irritable because I’d missed breakfast. I hadn’t mentioned being hungry, and was trying to hide my petulance, but Shaun noticed. He quietly reached into his briefcase, found a little bag of peanuts, and slid them to me without missing a beat in his presentation. I always use this story to describe Shaun. He will notice your suffering, whether it’s insignificant like mine was, or real and enormous, and he will have no judgement about it. He will simply try to alleviate it. He’s like a walking manifestation of the Buddhist prayer, “May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness; May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.”
Many know Shaun Griffin as a poet, translator, editor and teacher with many well-deserved awards - he was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2014, received the Rosemary McMillan Lifetime Achievement in Art Award from the Sierra Arts Foundation in 2006, was awarded the Silver Pen from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 1998, and received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1995.
But some may not know about the other work he’s done as the co-founder and former director of Community Chest Inc, and as a long time board member with Healthy Communities. Quietly, gently, but persistently and with determination, he's always fighting for Nevada's people, especially the people of Nevada's rural communities.
Behind the scenes, he's in meetings with elected officials and policy makers, making them hear the stories of rural Nevadans and what it means, for instance, to have a ratio of 3,772 to 1 for primary health care providers in Lyon County, or what it means for a rural community to have no grocery store within 100 miles.
When others can't be bothered to care about Nevada's smallest communities, Shaun is there. I've watched him sit through hours of Lyon County Commissioner's meetings way out in Yerington, finally getting a chance to testify on behalf of Silver City, just one of many things he did to voice support for the town's survival in 2014.
After the financial downturn in 2009, Silver SPRINGS, about an hour away from Shaun's home in Virginia City, was experiencing severe food insecurity, Shaun was key to finding a grant that would fill some of that gap, and to providing employment specialists onsite at Healthy Communities’ food pantry to help connect people with job training and job opportunities.
And it was Shaun who helped make sure rural Tonopah - far distant from the Comstock - got a Classroom on Wheels bus (known as the COW Bus), to expand early childhood education there.
Shaun also does physically and emotionally demanding work that would be tough for most people to even hear about. For instance, he volunteered to stand through long days, translating for hundreds of farm workers and their families as they endured hours of much-needed, painful dental procedures at free 3-day pop up clinic in Yerington a few years ago. He stood by them, translating, explaining, holding their hands, telling them it would be ok, even holding and rocking babies while their mothers were getting medical care.
You can hear Shaun reading from his new book of essays, Because the Light Will Not Forgive Me, at the Silver City School House on Sunday July 28,2019 at 2pm during a free, public event. The book is described as “luminous and moving essays” that “weave together a poetic meditation on living meaningfully in this world. Anchored in the American West but reaching well beyond, Shaun Griffin recounts his discoveries as a poet and devoted reader of poetry, a teacher of the disadvantaged, a friend of poets and artists, and a responsible member of the human family.” Copies of the book will be available during the Silver City reading.
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