This is Planet Money from NPR.
The way Jim Chapman tells it,
basically his whole life has been about heating the call of duty in his tight-knit rural community.
He was a cop for decades, a Boy Scout troop leader, a volunteer firefighter,
and an EMT, all in small-town Western Michigan, where he's from.
In his retirement, Jim became the deputy supervisor of Greencharter Township,
basically the assistant mayor.
And then something happened that put him in charge of the town.
And this will give you a sense of the scale of the place.
It was actually
while Jim was on shift as an EMT when he got a call from the dispatcher saying that someone had died.
Crap, that's Bob's house.
Bob was the town's supervisor, Jim's friend and his boss.
When Jim arrived,
other first responders told him that Bob had passed away peacefully in the night,
and they told Jim they would take care of Bob's body so he wouldn't have to.
I said, no, he needs a friend with him while we're doing this, and I will be here.
And I helped carry him out of the house.
I saw that as a moral duty.
In the days that followed, the town board decided to make Jim the new township supervisor.