Talk about your hometown heroes!

I was going to post about the agony of enduring a baseball/softball-free evening, but this is a much better read from a much better writer about a much better man. And I don't mean Kurt Warner.

More than ever, Birdies That Care must soar

He's Zach Johnson, and he's still from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The question isn't whether the native son will help his hometown in efforts to recover from flood devastation, but how. He said things are afoot, using PGA Tour channels and his own means.

"My mind's on it every day," Johnson said Monday.

"We're brainstorming. We've got a lot of ideas right now that we're looking into as far as relief and setting up this and setting up that with a number of different people and organizations, the Tour, myself. The PGA Tour and its players and its executives are really brainstorming and putting some good things on paper, and hopefully we can get some relief funds going here shortly.

"And then also even specifically back in Cedar Rapids with some friends of mine, we're really trying to work on some things and put some good things together. It's still so premature as to all the specifics. There's a number of levels to it, and we're really just waiting to see where this money that we can potentially raise can go."

Johnson became Cedar Rapids' best-known former resident when he won the Masters in 2007. He sure didn't hide his roots at his press conference the day he became the Masters champion, telling the world, "I'm Zach Johnson and I'm from Cedar Rapids, Iowa."

We need more famous people from Cedar Rapids and Iowa to step up. There may be times charity isn't really charity when it's accompanied by a press release and photo opportunity. But there also are times when famous folks need to be examples worth following.


Hey, former Cedar Rapids high school student Ashton Kutcher, how about throwing the home state a little support? If you already have, tell the world. Granted, our story isn't as enduring or compelling or as massively miserable to the outside world as Katrina or Darfur. But are you one of us or not?

Yes, that's unfair to single out one person. Kutcher and his wife, Demi Moore, have done a lot to help Chrysalis, a Los Angeles-based organization that helps homeless men and women find jobs and homes. But he has a bully pulpit, and he and all famous native Iowans should use theirs to get assistance sent back home.

Johnson left Iowa several years ago for Florida. PGA Tour guys have to live where you can play golf in December. But you can't argue he hasn't remained one of us, and not just because he asks to be introduced as from Cedar Rapids at all his PGA Tour stops.

This is the fourth year of his Birdies That Care effort. The first three beneficiaries were Community Free Health Clinic, the Madge Phillips Center at Waypoint, and Tanager Place. All were wonderfully worthy. Total contributions from the effort founded by Johnson and his wife, Kim, in conjunction with AEGON, were around $350,000.

This year's recipient, chosen months before the flood, is Boys & Girls Club of Cedar Rapids. Man, does that fine organization need such help now after its building on Ellis Boulevard NW got clobbered by the Cedar River. Even the second-floor gym of the building took in water.

"It literally gutted the whole thing," said John Tursi, the club's executive director. "Tables, chairs, games, anything for the kids. It's unbelievable."

Over the weekend, huge piles of muddy junk were piled on the club's curb. All that stuff kids had fun with weeks ago was covered in grime and sludge. Pinball machines aren't supposed to be gray.

In the summer, the club serves 155 kids from ages 6 to 18. Seventy percent of those kids live at or below the poverty level.

"It's a safe, positive, fun, educational place for them to be," Tursi said. "It's not for intervention or treatment. It's the first line of primary prevention. If these kids didn't have a safe place to be, most would end up in gang activities or in trouble, and wouldn't do as well in school."

Many of those kids, especially those displaced from their homes because of the flood, need the Boys & Girls Club more than ever now. It has taken a summer residence at Roosevelt Middle School. After that, fingers are crossed that a return to its old home is possible.

"Our building is bricks, concrete and steel," Tursi said. "We have very little drywall. We're going to decontaminate this building.

"To lose this building would be tough. We would like to stay here. That is the goal. But no matter what, we will be in this neighborhood. We're not leaving the west side."

The club needs basketballs and board games, all kinds of recreational materials. What it really needs most, of course, is cash.

"Exactly," Johnson said, "and they needed that before this happened. It's a terrible thing. I guess we chose the right facility for this year as far as helping out people. But I know they've been devastated, just completely demolished, if you will."

The defining story of this tragedy will be whether the "haves" adequately help the "have-nots." One "have" who lives more than a thousand miles away says he's on board. If he succeeds in getting some of his "have" friends in golf to help out, that would be big.

"My heart goes out, my family's heart goes out, and our prayers are certainly with Cedar Rapids and certainly all the other communities that have been affected and will be affected by this water," Johnson said.

"I know what Iowans are like, and they're going to grab hands and work hard and make it for the better because that's what we're about and what the community is about. ... I've always said I'm from Cedar Rapids. You can't take that away from me."

OK, which one of you connected celebrities from Iowa is next?