Sunny Nishimoto’s Silent Acts of forgiveness

For The Madera Tribune

Sunny Nishimoto.

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Scattered throughout Madera’s past is something phenomenal. Our town is full of quiet heroes — not heroes because of some act of bravery, but heroes because they engaged in silent acts of forgiveness repeated again and again, not in the context of a formal asking but rather freely given to one another and to the community.

This writer has been brought face to face with some of these heroes while working with some of MUSD’s Madera Method projects. The names of three Maderans jump out of the archives immediately: Sunny Nishimoto, Matilda Torres, and Marge Medellan.

Coate Tales would like to write about this trio in the next three articles, in today’s column and the next two. We think you will agree, they each came up against formidable challenges in the course of living their lives, challenges that would have made others bitter but which turned our heroes away from themselves and out toward others.