SALT LAKE CITY — All his life, John Starley Allen has heard voices.
Good voices. The kind that tell him to pick up his pen and pad of paper, or, these days, grab his laptop and write down what he’s hearing.
He can remember back to grade school at Oakwood Elementary, when he would rush home and write essays about what he’d observed, habitually starting out with “I was walking down the road …”
At 62, he’s still rushing home to write, and showing no signs of slowing down. This summer, Cedar Fort, under its Plain Sight imprint, has published “A Splash of Kindness,” John’s book about what he calls “the ripple effect.”
The book is a collection of musings that have been rattling around in his head for most of his life.
The stories are widely disparate. One is about sprinter Jesse Owens. Another is about Mrs. Stewart, John’s most influential teacher in school. One talks about Philo Farnsworth, the Utahn who invented television. Another is about a Utah woman’s service to Romanian orphans. Yet another is about John’s grandfather doctor.
They all have one common theme: what people do significantly impacts others. Like a rock thrown into a pond, the ripples from their actions extend on and on and on.
John’s focus is on the positive ripples, charting them from the vantage point of their outer reaches and funneling back to the source, showing just how far a single action or example can carry and the cumulative impact it has.
“The initial splash of kindness comes in many forms,” he says. “They are often simple, small acts of service from everyday, quiet heroes that have significant consequences and change lives.
“I just hope people will read this and say, ‘I’m going to do that,’ whatever it is. If we’re aware of the ripple effect, we can realize we can really make a difference. It can be so empowering.”
John’s motivation for writing “A Splash of Kindness” was not financial — unless his definition of “a good living” is sleeping under an underpass. He smilingly admits he’d have gone broke long ago working for himself, just listening to the aforementioned voices.
His day job as a professional technical writer — what he calls “the meat and potatoes” — pays the bills and allows him to indulge after hours in the fun stuff that calls to him.
“What I like more than anything is that blank computer screen,” he says, “and the thought, OK, let’s see what we can say.”
He has written poetry, song lyrics, plays, books and everything in between.
In 1977, when he was just 24, he entered a songwriting competition, penning lyrics to a melody by Smokey Robinson that resulted in first prize and a recording called “Santa Is Flying Out Tonight.“ After that, he moved with his family to Nashville for a time, where he performed some of his songs at the Bluebird Café.
Back home in Utah, he wrote a play about Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., called “A Way with Words,” that was performed at Promised Valley Theatre.
In 2002, Health Communications, Inc. — the Florida company that started the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books — published his novella, “Christmas Gifts, Christmas Voices,” a story about tragedy and redemption based on a real-life incident John experienced while living in Moab.
In the afterword of that book, he concludes: “I think we do more good than we know. And if we’re aware of the ripple effect, hopefully we’ll keep striving to do good.”
That statement paved the way for his latest book.
It’s just the tip of the mountain. “There’s really no end to the number of ripple effect stories,” John says. He could write about them the rest of his life and not come close to running out.
He might do just that.
Lee Benson's About Utah column runs Mondays.
Email: benson@deseretnews.com