It's been perhaps a decade now since the Philadelphia Daily News promoted a contest in which the winner got to travel to any place in the country. A guy from West Oak Lane, near the southwestern part of my legislative district, won the contest.

Where do you want to go, contest organizers asked him. Center City, he said. You don't understand, they said, you can go anywhere in the United States. We'll pay for your trip. I want to go to Center City, he said. He said he had never really been there and had read and heard a lot about it.

So the Daily News decided to use the money they had budgeted for plane fares and hotels and spend it on a chauffered limousine, concert tickets, restaurant meals, and the like for the winner and his wife. They covered his itinerary as he discovered the world of which he was aware but apart from. He told them he had a great time, and was delighted with his choice of a place to visit.

Philadelphia has had many political and community activists over the years. We have had only one Lenora Berson.

Lenora died earlier this month at the age of 83. She was an impassioned advocate who could teach a class, do social work, organize testimony and demonstrations,write speeches, lobby elected officials, initiate candidacies for public office, mastermind election campaigns, write articles and books, take photographs worthy of being shown in art galleries, promote Philadelphia's hidden gems, and organize events to promote the city that no else had thought of.