When people go above and beyond their daily duties to help others, they rightfully deserve credit for that extra helping hand.

In this case, one group of ladies going above and beyond thanked another group of men and women for their volunteer work by providing a meal for them.

Ladies with three Baptist churches in the Bannertown Volunteer Fire District, or whose members mostly live in the district — Bannertown Baptist, Cornerstone Baptist and Holly Springs Baptist — provided a delicious meal Monday night for the firefighters and ladies auxiliary members at the fire department.

This is an annual event the ladies of the churches do to show their appreciation for the hours of volunteer time the firefighters and auxiliary put into helping protect the community.

As a wife of one of those firefighters, and a member of the ladies auxiliary, I have to mention what a great meal the ladies of the churches provided — complete with chicken with gravy, green beans, potato salad, rolls and peach cobbler a la mode.

The meal was greatly appreciated and I just want to say thank you to those ladies for taking time out of their busy schedules to come and feed us.

The firefighters, both men and women, some of whom spend extra time as medical first responders, spend a lot of time away from home whether doing countless hours of training, fighting fires, responding to wrecks and downed trees, aiding those in need of medical care or just keeping things straight at the fire stations on their rotation of pulling duty.

That is a lot of time away from home.

The ladies auxiliaries also do a lot for the fire departments. They act as the designated support group for the firefighters, taking drinks and refreshments to the scene of incidents, raising money to help provide extra needed items at the stations, cooking meals a few times a year for the firefighters.

Everything we do, whether it is on the scene or behind the scene, is all worth it to just hear someone say “thank you” and to know we made a difference.

So I want to thank you the ladies of Bannertown, Cornerstone and Holly Springs for their way of saying “thank you.”

Wendy Byerly Wood is the associate editor of The Mount Airy News. She can be reached at wbyerly-wood@mtairynews.com.