Ordinary people are rarely viewed as heroic, perhaps because we've been conditioned to believe that heroism necessitates exploits that weave their way through more spectacular and dramatic spheres.

Griffin Beaney would undoubtedly balk at his heroism, except that, well, he sustains the thoughts of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services:

"Day after day," she said once, "ordinary people become heroes through extraordinary and selfless actions to help their neighbors."

There is no more extraordinary or selfless action than to risk your own body for the benefit of another human being. Cue Beaney, who recently and successfully donated bone marrow and plasma to a man, stricken with leukemia, he may never meet.

Beaney, 24, who played two sports at Waterford High and graduated from Villanova, is an accountant for a dialysis company in Massachusetts. Beaney's days as the manager of the football team at Nova happily conspired with the way he's always paid attention to his dad's compulsion for community to help save a life.

"When I was at Nova," Beaney said, "coach Talley (former football coach Andy Talley) started a program asking anyone who wanted to help to join the Bone Marrow Match Registry. Five years later, I got the call."

The call came in February.

"A month later, I had to get a physical and a ton of blood work to reconfirm I was the best match," Beaney said. "Five days prior, I got injections of a drug that increases white blood cell production. Each morning for five days, I got injections and the fifth day I did the donation. For four hours, as they pumped blood out of one arm, they extracted what they needed and then pumped blood back to the other arm.

"I got bad headaches for a day and general fatigue. Donation day, there was a lot of fatigue. Some people get nausea and muscle stiffness. I didn't have too many side effects. But I didn't feel like myself for a week."

All to help a mostly anonymous man feel like himself again for the rest of his life. All Beaney knows is that the helped a 50-year-old man with leukemia. He may never know all the details.

"It's nice to know I could make a difference in someone's life," Beaney said. "I'm 24 and healthy. It took me a week to recover. That's nothing compared to changing someone's life. It goes back to my dad instilling all the community service in me growing up."

A primer on Griffin's dad, Rick Beaney: If Waterford's overall athletic success could be pinned on one guy, it's the man they call Beans, who has kept caring more than a decade now after his kids stopped playing sports. He's still running the concession stand at the Babe Ruth Field. He's coached. He's instrumental in the Cactus Jack Organization, perhaps the most benevolent order in this corner of the world. He volunteers. He cares. And he's cared about everybody else's kids as much as his own — a characteristic among many dads in the 06385 — that sustains the overall excellence in tangible and intangible ways.

"My entire life I've seen him put others before himself," Griffin Beaney said. "He instilled that in the whole family. I wanted to make a difference in my own way. This was a no brainer. I also got inspiration, too, from (family friend) Demetra Sutera, who gave her kidney to her father about 10 years ago now. Dave Laffey (a state championship-winning youth baseball coach in town) gave bone marrow to his sister. I knew if I did this, I'd be in good company."

At the risk of sounding somewhere between preachy and gratuitous, this is probably a good time to remind everyone that even as many of us stand on our soapboxes and yell damnation at one another, there's still time to be Griffin Beaney. We needn't donate bone marrow necessarily. Just, you know, think about helping others before shouting at them.

But if you did want to be more like Griff ...

"If anyone around my age and a little older or younger wants to, it takes 10 minutes to join the registry," Beaney said. "A cheek swab and that's it. It's one of the best things someone can do. I think by now we've had five or six football players at Nova donate."

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro