This edition of Impulse marks its 20th year of publication. That is, 80 issues of hero news, award announcements, historical case reviews, and Hero Fund history.
Issue No. 1 – a modest eight-pager – was published in Winter 2005, shortly after the Hero Fund’s 2004 centennial celebration. Inspired by the community between medal recipients he witnessed at the recently concluded centennial festivities, then-Hero Fund President Mark Laskow wanted to foster and encourage that connection.
At the centennial celebration, Laskow knew he wanted to expand that community.
“Something good is happening here,” he said at the time. “We need to seek ways to tell the stories of our heroes as real-life illustrations of the best we have within us as human beings.”
Thus, Impulse was born as a way to not only connect heroes with each other, but keep our heroes connected to the Hero Fund.
Over the decades(!), Impulse has featured articles on Carnegie Corporation’s Medal of Philanthropy, the happenings of Andrew Carnegie’s European Hero Funds, biographies on the Hero Fund’s (then) six presidents, and, most importantly, the legacies our heroes leave behind. Generations of the hero’s family (and often the victim’s family, too) are affected for years by their loved one’s willingness to run toward danger.
According to the newsletter’s first editor, Walter Rutkowski, a longtime employee of the Hero Fund, the newsletter was named for a quote from Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian David McCullough who spoke at the centennial event, which echoed Carnegie’s own time-honored thoughts about heroic action being “impulsive”.
“We are here to honor people who are willing to sacrifice everything on impulse perhaps, but what a golden impulse, to preserve the individual life that’s threatened,” McCullough said.
After Rutkowski’s retirement in 2017, then-Outreach Coordinator Jewels Phraner took the reins of the publication.
“I knew it would be big shoes to fill,” she said. “But how lucky am I to get to tell these stories? Our heroes do amazing things. Every story is riveting because every story is life or death. Shining a light on these stories is one of the best parts of my job,” said Phraner, who now serves the organization as the director of outreach and communications.