A comment from retired U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Andrea Marcille, who grew up in New London, attended the Coast Guard Academy and eventually took command of the Leadership Development Center at the academy, caught my attention in a recent story by Day Staff Writer Erica Moser.

“I don’t know that I really identified as a leader until I was a commanding officer of a patrol boat,” Marcille said.

Since then Marcille has had more occasion than most to contemplate how leadership dawns and how to develop it -- as a Coast Guard officer and trainer and most recently the director of the academy Alumni Association. The head of an alumni group leads the leaders. In her cohort of early female cadets among a large majority of men, leadership would have had to be a continuous theme for every effort they undertook.

Her story is one of several The Day has covered in the past couple of weeks about local leaders -- the bold, the resolute, the beginners, their mentors, the ones who have already made a difference and the ones who are gearing up.

Dr. Jan Akus of Norwich and his patient, Rose Johnson, allowed journalists Brian Hallenbeck and Dana Jensen to capture the physician’s attempt to put order into a patient’s life after hospitalization. He makes house calls. He makes a difference. His compassionate, constructive style of leadership avoids the blame game as to why patients must deal with a lack of coordination after discharge. He is leading a real-life demonstration of a pervasive health care problem and an individualized approach to managing it.

Tammy Millsaps leads with fervor and a demand for discipline. She coached the New London girls’ basketball team -- all seven of them -- to a state championship, and showed the way to a budding generation of leaders who seemed to take naturally and gleefully to the role she has modeled for them. The win means that next year there will be a big, new reason to try out for the team.

Mark Jones’ team won, too. For the first time in 41 years the Saints of Saint Bernard School have a division championship. Just imagine the exhilaration. Leaders and their teams get to experience incredible emotional payback not just from a win but from being part of something bigger then themselves. Jones’ leadership style is determined and inspiring, and his team was playing for Coach.

A column by David Collins recalled the quiet intensity of the late Barkley Hendricks, who made a mighty impact on the reputation and popularity of Black American art through his gorgeous, compelling artistic vision and skill. It is impossible not to look long and hard at a Barkley Hendricks portrait. Maybe Hendricks, a longtime professor of studio art at Connecticut College, did not have to sound like a leader; he could just show the way a leader deploys his strengths to forge ahead.

The articles did not set out to find leadership in action, but when you closely cover people doing an extraordinary job, leadership emerges. Locally is where leadership begins and, from the start, each leader’s style is one of a kind. Locally is where they first see their effect on others and recognize, as Andrea Marcille did, that she was a leader whom others would follow. Locally is where we get to read about people here who make their mark, first here and then maybe beyond.

That a local newspaper would happen on so many examples of outstanding leadership in a week or two might be a surprise. Most people normally recognize a leader when they see one, but self-serving leaders in national politics have skewed our expectations toward cynicism. Or, we have come to recognize only celebrities as leaders.

Politicians themselves know better. They like to say that all politics is local. By the same logic, all leadership is local, too.

Lisa McGinley is a member of The Day Editorial Board.